Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2008 witii funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
littp://www.arcliive.org/details/evolutionofdragoOOsmituoft
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Published for the John Rylands Library at
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H. M. McKechnie, Secretary)
12 Lime Grove, Oxford Road, MANCHESTER
LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
London ; 39 Paternoster Row
New York : 443-449 Fourth Avenue, and Thirtieth Street
Chicago : Prairie Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street
Bombay : Hornby Road
Calcutta : 6 Old Court House Street
Madras : 167 Mount Road
THE EVOLUTION OF
THE DRAGON
G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
1919
St. Mic!ij>,ers Col].-c^ DKrav
PREFACE.
SOME explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of
these elaborations of the lectures which 1 have given at the
John Rylands Library during the last three winters.
They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds
them more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly
expressed in the title " The Evolution of the Dragon".
The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched
from a variety of arduous war-time occupations ; and it reveals only
too plainly the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On
23 Februaiy, 1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society an essay on the spread of certain customs and
beliefs in ancient times under the title " On the Significance of the
Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification," and in
my Rylands Lecture two weeks later I summed up the general con-
clusions.^ In view of the lively controversies that followed the publica-
tion of the former of these addresses, I devoted my next Rylands
Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the discussion of " TTie Relationship
of the Egyptian Practice of Mummification to the Development of
Ci\ilization ". In preparing this address for publication in the Bulletin
some months later so much stress was laid upon the problems of
" Incense and Libations " that I adopted this more concise title for the
elaboration of the lecture which forms the first chapter of this book.
This will explain why so many matters are discussed in that chapter
which have little or no connexion either with " Incense and Libations"
or with "The Evolution of the Dragon".
The study of the development of the belief in water's life-giving
^ " The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East and in
America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, January- March, 1916.
vi PREFACE
attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma
[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the
history of " Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II).
What played a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was
the discussion of certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon
Precolumbian monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America
{Nature, 25 Nov., 1915; 16 Dec, 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916).
For in the course of investigating the meaning of these remarkable de-
signs I discovered that the Elephant-headed rain-god of America had
attributes identical with those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and
\ Soma) and the Chinese dragon. The investigation of these identities
I established the fact that the American rain-god was transmitted across
Ithe Pacific from India via Cambodia.
The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance
of the part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian
avata7' as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder- beast. Under
the stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Ry lands Lecture on "The Cult
of Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November,
1917) to the " Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the
problems of Olympian obstetrics.
Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration
of large series of lantern projections ; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon
the publication of the lectures in the Bulletin, it became necessary, as a
rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange my
material and put into the form of a wiitten narrative the story which
had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments upon
them.
In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new
points of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little re-
semblance to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such
transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written re-
port of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one
of the numerous pictures is reproduced.
Each of the first two lectures was printed before the succeeding
lecture was set up in type. For these reasons there is a good deal of
PREFACE vi
repetition, and in successive lectures a wider interpretation of evidence
mentioned in the preceding addresses. Had it been possible to revise
the whole book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties had
permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might
have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little
more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more
conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of present-
ing an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story : but
my obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter :
I had to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious circum-
stances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent argu-
ment, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the
dragon's histoiy. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The
Meaning of Myths," which will be published in the Bulletin of the
fohn Rylands Library, I have expounded the general conclusions that
emerge from the studies embodied in these three lectures ; and in my
forthcoming book, " The Story of the Flood," I have submitted the
whole mass of evidence to examination in detail, and attempted to ex-
tract from it the real story of mankind's age-long search for the elixii
of life.
In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to
portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation
works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the
giver of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the
personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The fertility
of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be regarded as
dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not illogical to kill
him when his virility showed signs of failing and so imperilled the
country's prosperity. But when the view developed that the dead
king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he became the
god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of life-giving
to the land and people than was the case before. He was the Nile,
and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent
creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings and
2ods.
vm
PREFACE
But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified
with Set.
The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until
an ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother,
as the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human
blood ; and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice.
Her murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately
identified with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the
slaying of the dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident ; and
in the process of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind
of interpretation and also confusion with the legendaiy account of the
conflict between Horus and Set.
When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of
a human victim was no longer logically necessary : but an explanation
had to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Man-
kind (no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful
and rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or
god was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for
this treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of
the king or god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by
Horus in the legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence be-
came confused the one with the other. The king Horus took the
place of the Great Mother as the avenger of the gods. As she was
identified with the moon, he became the Sun-god, and assumed many
of the Great Mother's attributes, and also became her son. In the
further development of the myth, when the Sun-god had completely
usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of destruction
seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious men who
were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an evil
dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great Mother
and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly com-
plex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the dragon-
myth were derived.
When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimil-
ated with those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the
PREFACE
IX
animals with which these deities were identified came to be regarded
individually and collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's
powers. Thus the cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the
lion and the serpent, the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the
life-giving and the life-destroying powers of water, and composite
monsters or dragons were invented by combining parts of these various
creatures to express the different manifestations of the vital powers of
water. The process of elaboration of the attributes of these monsters
led to the development of an amazmgly complex myth : but the story
became still furthei involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers
became confused with man's vital spirit and identified with the good or
evil genius which was regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome,
of every individual's body, and the arbiter of his destiny. In my
remarks on the ka and ihe/ravaski I have merely hinted at the vast
complexity of these elements of confusion.
Had I been familiar with [Archbishop] Sbderblom's important
monograph,^ when I was writing Chapters I and HI, I might have at-
tempted to indicate how vital a part the confusion of the individual
genius with the mythical wonder-beast has played in the history of
the myths relating to the latter. For the identification of the dragon
wdth the vital spirit of the individual explains why the stories of the
former appealed to the selfish interest of every human being. At the
time the lecture on " Incense and Libations " was written, I had no
idea that the problems of the ka and ^g fi'avaski had any connexion
with those relating to the dragon. But in the third chapter a quota-
lion from Professor Langdon's account of " A Ritual of Atonement
for a Babylonian King " indicates that the Babylonian equivalent of
the ka and the fravashi., "my god who walks at my side," presents
many points of affinity to a dragon.
When in the lecture on "Incense and Libations" I ventured to
make the daring suggestion that the ideas underlying the Egyptian con-
ception of the ka were substantially identical v^th those entertained by
^ Nathan Soderblom, " Las Fravashis Etude sur les Traces dans le
Mazdeisme dune Ancienne Conception sur la Sur^ivance des Morts," Paris,
1899.
X PREFACE
the Iranians in reference to \}[\efravaski, I was not aware of the fact
that such a comparison had already been made. In [Archbishop]
Soderblom's monograph, which contains a wealth of information in
corroboration of the views set forth in Chapter I, the following state-
ment occurs : " L analyse, faite par M. Brede-Kristensen {^Aigyptetnes
forestillingei' oin livet efte7' doden, 1 4 ss. Kristiania, 1 896) du ka
egyptien, jette une vive lumiere sur notre question, par la frappante
analogic qui semble exister entre le sens originaire de ces deux termes
ka et fravaski" (p. 58, note 4). " La similitude entre le ka et la
fravashi a ete signalee deja par Nestor Lhote, Lettres ^crites
d Egypte, note, selon Maspero, Etudes de 7nythologie et darch^o-
logie ^oyptiennes, I, 47, note 3."
In support of the view, which I have submitted in Chapter I, that
the original idea of ^efravaskt, like that of the ka, was suggested by
the placenta and the foetal membranes, I might refer to the specific
statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that " les fravashis tiennent en
ordre I'enfant dans le sein de sa mere et I'enveloppent de sorte qu'il ne
meurt pas " {op. cit., Soderblom, p. 41, note 1 ). The fravashi
"nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is
always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also as-
sociated with the functions of the Great Mother. " Nous voyons dans
fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conservee et exercee aussi
apres la mort. La fravashi est le principe de vie, la faculte qu'a
I'homme de se soutenir par la nourriture, de manger, d'absorber et
ainsi d'exister et de se developper. Cette etymologie et le role attribute
a la fravashi dans le developpement de Tembryon, des animaux, des
plantes rappellent en quelque sorte, comme le remarque M. Foucher,
I'idee directrice de Claude Bernard. Seulement la fravashi n'a jamais
ete une abstraction. La fravashi est une puissance vivante, un
homitncnhis in homine, un etre personnifie comme du reste toutes les
sources de vie et de mouvement que I'homme non civilise apergoit dans
son organisme.
II ne faut pas non plus considerer la fravashi comme un double
de Ihomme, elle en est plutot une partie, un bote intime qui con-
tinue son existence apres la mort aux memes conditions qu'avant, et
PREFACE X
qui oblige les vivants a lui fournir les aliments necessaires" {pp. cit.,
p. 59).
Thus the fi'avasJii has the same remarkable associations with
nourishment and placental functions as the ka. As a further suggestion
of its connexion with the Great Mother as the inaugurator of the year,
and in virtue of her physiological (uterine) functions the moon-controlled
measurer of the month, it is important to note that " Le 19^ jour de
chaque mois est egalement consecre aux fravashis en general. Le
premier mois porte aussi le nom de Farvardin. Quant aux formes des
fetes mensuelles, elles semblent conformes a celles que nous allons
rappeler [les fetes celebrees en I'honneur des mortes] " {pp. cit., p. 1 0).
But the f^'avasJii was not only associated with the Great Mother,
but also with the Water-god or Good Dragon, for it controlled the
waters of irrigation and gave fertility to the soil {pp. cit. , p. 36). The
fravashi was also identified with the third member of the primitive
Trinity, the Warrior Sun-god, not merely in the general sense as the
adversary of the powers of evil, but also in the more definite form of
the Winged Disk {pp. cit., pp. 67 and 68).
In all these respects the fravashi is brought into close association
with the dragon, so that in addition to being " the divine and immortal
element " {op. cit., p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that possesses
a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It was in
fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early psycho-
logists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct of self-preservation.
In the text of Chapters I and III I have referred to the Greek,
Babylonian, Chinese, and Melanesian variants of essentially the same
conception. Soderblom refers to an interesting parallel among the
Karens, whose kelah corresponds to the Iranian fravashi (p. 54,
Note 2: compare also A. E. Crawley, "The Idea of the Soul,"
1909).
In the development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played
a very obtrusive part : but I have deliberately refrained from entering
into a detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the
real causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of
a sky-world or a heaven became drawn into the dragon story it came
xu
PREFACE
to play so prominent a part as to convince most writers that the myth
was primarily and essentially astronomical. But it is clear that origin-
ally the myth was concerned solely with the regulation of irrigation
systems and the search upon earth for an elixir of Hfe.
When I put forward the suggestion that the annual inundation of
the Nile provided the information for the first measurement of the year,
I was not aware of the fact that Sir Norman Lockyer (" The Dawn
of Astronomy," 1 894, p. 209), had already made the same claim and
substantiated it by much fuller evidence than I have brought together
here.
In preparing these lectures I have received help from so large a
number of correspondents that it is difficult to enumerate all of them.
But I am under a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alan Gardiner for
calling my attention to the fact that the common rendering of the
Egyptian word didi as "mandrake" was unjustifiable, and to Mr.
F. LI. Griffith for explaining its true meaning and for lending me the
literature relating to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the
Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Department in the Manchester
Museum, gave me very material assistance by bringing to my attention
some very important literature which otherwise would have been over-
looked ; and both she and Miss Dorothy Davison helped me with the
drawings that illustrate this volume. Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me
much of the information concerning shells and cephalopods which forms
such an essential part of the argument, and he also collected a good
deal of the literature which I have made use of. Dr. A. C. Haddon,
F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books and journals which
I was unable to obtain in Manchester ; and Mr. Donald A. Mac-
kenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of information,
especially upon the folklore of Scotland and India. Nor must I forget
to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of Mr. Henry
Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W. E. Leigh,
of the University Library. To all of these and to the still larger
number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most grate-
ful thanks.
During the three years in which these lectures wa'e compiled I
PREFACE
XUl
have been associated with Dr. W. H, R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr.
T. H. Pear in their psychological work in the military hospitals, and
the influence of this interesting experience is manifest upon every page
of this volume.
But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and
directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.
W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real
science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of civiliza-
tion.
G. ELLIOT SMITH.
9 December, 191 8.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1.
PACE
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 1
CHAPTER II.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 76
CHAPTER III.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 140
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACIKG PACK
Fig. 1. — The conventional Egyptian representation of the burning of incense and
the pouring of libations -
Fig. 2. — Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth, representing a restoration of
the early mummy found at .MedCim by Professor Flinders Petrie, now in
the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London .... 16
Fig. 3. — A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta by Mr.
Quibell 17
Fig. 4.— Portrait statue of an Egyptian lady of the Pyramid Age .... 18
Fig. 5.— Statue of an Egyptian noble of the Pyramid Age to show the technical
skill in the representation of life-like eyes 52
Fig. 6.— Representation of the ancient Mexican worship of the Sun ... 70
Fig. 7. — A medizeval picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud (after the late
Professor \V. Anderson) 80
Fig. 8.— A Chinese Dragon (after dc Groot) 80
Fig. 9. — Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon 81
Fig. 10.— Babylonian Weather God 81
Fig. 11.— Reproduction of a picture in the .Maya Codex Troano representing the
Rain-god Chac treading upon the Serpent's head, which is interposed between
the earth and the rain the god is pouring out of a bowl. .\ Rain-goddess
stands upon the Serpent's tail 84
Fig. 12. — Another representation of the elephant-headed Rain-god. He is hold-
ing thunderbolts, conventionalized in a hand-like form. The serpent is
converted into a sac, holding up the rain-waters 84
Fig. 13.— A page (the 36th) of the Dresden .Maya Codex 86
Fig. 14. — A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of
the antelope and fish of Ea. — B. The " sea-goat " as the vehicle of Ea or
Marduk. — C to K — a series of varieties of the makara from the Buddhist Rails
at Buddha Gaya and .Mathura, circa 70 B.C.— 70 a.d., after Cunningham
("Archaeological Survey of India," Vol. Ill, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).— L.
The makara as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It is not
difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly diffusion of culture,
such a picture should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American
elephant-headed gOi^I ............ 88
Fig. 15. — Photograph of a Chinese embroidery in the Manchester School of Art
representing the Dragon and the Pearl- -Moon Symbol 98
h 3£vii
xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGB
Fig. Iti.— The God of Thunder (from a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the
John Ryiands Library) 136
pjg_ 17. From Joannes de Turrecremata's " Meditationes seu Contemplationcs ".
Rome: UlricJi Han, H67 137
Fio. 18. (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing, perhaps, the
earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of the palette) as a woman
with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders Petrie " The Royal Tombs of
the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig.i71). The pharaoh is
wearing a belt from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in
place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This affords corrobora-
tion of the view that Hathor assumed the functions originally attributed to
the cowry-shell, {b) The king's sporran, where Hathor-heads (H) take the
place of the cowries of the primitive girdle 150
Fig. 19. — ^The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic representations of the
Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the ancient Maya monuments at
Copan, Central America (after Maudslay's photograph and diagram). The
girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (Oliva or Conns) and
amulets representing human faces corresponding to the Hathor-heads on the
Narmer palette (Fig. 18) 151
Fig. 20. — Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in (a) East Africa
and (b) Oceania respectively. (c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of
Siriraa Devata on the Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and pre-
cious stones, and what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of
cowries, (d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads
of deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between
the heads recall Hathor's sistra 153
Fig. 21. — (a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the temple of the
Third Pyramid at Giza, It shows the Pharaoh Mycerinus supported on his
right side by the goddess Hathor, represented as a woman with the moon and
the cow's horns upon her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bear-
ing upon her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (b) The Ecuador Aphro-
dite. Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi,
Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907, Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque com-
posite monster intended to represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates
XXXV, XXXVl, and XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus,
whose body is a Loligo, and whose limbs are human 164
Fig. 22. — (a) Sepia officinalis, after Tvyon, "Cephalopoda", (b) Loligo vulgaris,
after Tryon. (r) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after
Tryon 168
Fig. 23. — A series of Mycenaean conventionalizations of the Argonaut and the
Octopus (after Tiimpel), which provided the basis for Houssay's theory of the
origin of the triskele (a, c, and d) and swastika {b and e), and Siret's theory
to explain the design of Bes's face (/ and g-) 172
Fig. 24.— (a) and (b) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann). (a) The so-called
"owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form
of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay). (b) The other vase represents the
Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands— a
three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (c) A Cretan vase
from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a decoration
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix
PACING PAG8
upon the pot instead of in its form. (. cit. supra.
16 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
was naturally attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itsell
if it were possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be
unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It
was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early em-
balmer to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a
recognizable likeness to the man when alive : although from time to
time such attempts were repeatedly made,^ until the period of the
XXI Dynasty, when the operator clearly was convinced that be
had at last achieved what his predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five
centuries, had been trying in vain to do.
Early Mummies.
In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian
attempts at mummification ' the corpse was swathed in a large series
of bandages, which were moulded into shape to represent the form of
the body. In a later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in
1 892 by Professor Flinders Petrie at MedGm, the superficial bandages
had been impregnated wdth a resinous paste, which while still plastic
was moulded into the form of the body, special care being bestowed
upon the modelling of the face ^ and the organs of reproduction, so as
to leave no room for doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor
Junker has described * an interesting series of variations of these
practices. In two graves the bodies were covered with a layer of
stucco plaster. First the corpse was covered vsdth a fine linen cloth :
then the plaster was put on, and modelled into the form of the body
(p. 252). But in two other cases it was not the whole body that was
^ See my volume on " The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of
the Cairo Museum.
^ G. Elliot Smith, " The ELarliest Evidence of Attempts at Mummifica-
tion in Egypt," ^^/^^/ British Association, 1912, p. 612: compare also
J. Garstang, " Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt," London, 1907, pp. 29 and
30. Professor Garstang did not recognize that mummification had been
attempted.
^ G. Elliot Smith, " The History of Mummification in Egypt," Proc.
Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 1910 : also " Egyptian Mummies,"
Journal of Egyptian Archeology, Vol. I, Part III, July, 1914, Plate.
XXXI.
^ " Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the
Pyramids of Gizah, \9\ A," Journal of Egyptian Archceology, Vol. I, Oct.
1914. p. 250.
= 2
o S
^►-
Fig. 3. — A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta
BY Mr. Quibell
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 17
covered with this layer of stucco, but only the head. Professor Junker
claims that this was done *' apparently because the head was regarded
as the most important part, as the organs of taste, sight, smell, and
hearing were contained in it ". But surely there was the additional
and more obtrusive reason that the face affords the means of identifying
the individual ! For this modelling of the features was intended
primarily as a restoration of the form of the body which had been
altered, if not actually destroyed. In other cases, where no attempt
was made to restore the features in such durable materials as resin or
stucco, the linen-enveloped head was modelled, and a representation
of the eyes painted upon it so as to enhance the life-like appearance
of the face.
These facts prove quite conclusively that the earliest attempts to
reproduce the features of the deceased and so preserve his likeness,
were made upon the wrapped mummy itself. Thus the mummy was
intended to be the portrait as well as the actual bodily remains of the
dead. In view of certain differences of opinion as to the original sig-
nificance of the funerary ritual, which I shall have occasion to discuss
later on (see p. 20), it is important to keep these facts clearly in mind.
A discovery made by Mr. J. E. Quibell in the course of his ex-
cavations at Sakkara ^ suggests that, as an outcome of these practices
a new procedure may have been devised in the Pyramid Age — the
making of a death-mask. For he discovered what may be the mask
taken directly from the face of the Pharaoh Teta (Fig. 3).
About this time also the practice originated of making a life-size
portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the
actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they
have been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker
found one made of Nile mud."
Junker believes that there was an intimate relationship between
the plaster-covered heads and the reserve-heads. They were both
expressions of the same idea, to preserve a simulacrum of the deceased
when his actual body had lost all recognizable likeness to him as he
^"Excavations at Saqqara," 1907-8, p. 113.
' The great variety of experiments that were being made at the be-
ginning of the Pyramid Age bears ample testimony to the fact that the
original inventors of these devices w^ere actually at work in Lower Egypt
at that time.
18 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
was when alive. The one method aimed at combining in the same
object the actual body and the likeness ; the other at making a more
life-like portrait apart from the corpse, which could take the place of
the latter when it decayed.
Junker states further that "it is no chance that the substitute-
heads . . . entirely, or at any rate chiefly, are found in the tombs that
have no statue-chamber and probably possessed no statues. The
statues [of the whole body] certainly were made, at any rate partly,
with the intention that they should take the place of the decaying
body, although later the idea was modified. The placing of the
substitute-head in [the burial chamber of] the mastaba therefore be-
came unnecessary at the moment when the complete figure of the dead
[placed in a special hidden chamber, now commonly called the ser-
dab\ was introduced." The ancient Egyptians themselves called
the serdab \}[\e pr-twt or " statue-house," and the group of chambers,
forming the tomb-chapel in the mastaba, was known to them as the
" /^^-house' /
It is important to remember that, even when the custom of making
a statue of the deceased became fully established, the original idea of
restoring the form of the mummy itself or its wrappings was never aban-
doned. The attempts made in the XVIIl, and XXI and XXII
Dynasties to pack the body of the mummy itself and by artificial means
give it a life-like appearance afford evidence of this. In the New
Empire and in Roman times the wrapped mummy was sometimes
modelled into the form of a statue. But throughout Egyptian history
it was a not uncommon practice to provide a painted mask for the
wrapped mummy, or in early Christian times simply a portrait of the
deceased.
With this custom there also persisted a remembrance of its ori-
ginal significance. Professor Garstang records the fact that in the XII
Dynasty,'^ when a painted mask was placed upon the wrapped
mummy, no statue or statuette was found in the tomb. The under-
^ Aylward M. Blackman, " The A'<^-House and the Serdab," Journal
of Egyptian ArchfBology, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250. The
word serdab is merely the Arabic word used by the native workmen, which
has been adopted and converted into a technical term by European archae-
ologists.
- Op. cit. p. 171.
Fig. 4. — Portrait Statue of an Egyptian
Lady of the Pyramid Age
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 19
takers apparently realized that the mummy ' which was provided with
the life-like mask was therefore fulfilling the purposes for which statues
were devised. So also in the New Empire the packing and model-
ling of the actual mummy so as to restore its life-like appearance were
regarded as obviating the need for a statue.
I must now return to the further consideration of the Old Kingdom
statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same
desire, to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the
sculptors attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like
portraits, which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic
feeling (Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the
P;e-dynastic Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains
of the dead, were strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts
were turned more specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of
the nature of life and death by seeing the bodies of their dead pre-
served whole and incorruptible ; and, if their actions can be regarded
as an expression of their ideas, they began to wonder what was
lacking in these physically complete bodies to prevent them from
feeling and acting like living beings. Such must have been the results
of their puzzled contemplation of the great problems of life and death.
Otherwise the impulse to make more certain the preservation of the
body by the invention of mummification and to retain a life-like
representation of the deceased by means of a sculptured statue re-
mains inexplicable. But when the corpse had been rendered incor-
ruptible and the deceased's portrait had been fashioned with realistic
perfection the old ideas would recur with renewed strength. The
belief then took more definite shape that if the missing elements of
vitality could be restored to the statue, it might become animated and
the dead man would live again in his vitalized statue. This prompted
a more intense and searching investigation of the problems concerning
the nature of the elements of vitality of which the corpse was deprived
at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in course of time a
highly complex system of philosophy developed."
Mt is a remarkable fact that Professor Garstang, who brought to light
perhaps the best, and certainly the best-preserved, collection of Middle
Kingdom mummies ever discovered, failed to recognize the fact that they
had really been embalmed {o,'^. cit. p. 171).
" The reader who wishes for fuller information as to the reality of
these beliefs and how^ seriously ihey were held will find them still in active
20 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found
practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to
the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and
sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was
believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left in situ: so
that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it pos-
sible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act volun-
tarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the physiological
functions of the heart. But the element of vitality which left the
body at death had to be restored to the statue, which represented the
deceased in the /§^-house.^
In my earlier attempts " to interpret these problems, I adopted the
view that the making of portrait statues was the direct outcome
of the practice of mummification. But Dr. Alan Gardiner, whose
intimate knowledge of the early literature enables him to look at
such problems from the Egyptian's own point of view, has suggested
a modification of this interpretation. Instead of regarding the custom
of making statues as an outcome of the practice of mummification,
he thinks that the two customs developed simultaneously, in response
to the twofold desire to preserve both the actual body and a repre-
sentation of the features of the dead. But I think this suggestion
does not give adequate recognition to the fact that the earliest at-
tempts at funerary portraiture were made upon the wrappings of the
actual mummies.^ This fact and the evidence which I have already
operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese philosophy will be
found in De Groot's " Religious System of China," especially Vol. IV,
Book II. It represents the fully developed (New Empire) system of Egyptian
belief modified in various ways by Babylonian, Indian and Central Asiatic
influences, as well as by accretions developed locally in China.
^ A. M. Blackman, " The Ka-Wow%& and the Serdab," The Journal
of Egyptian Archceology, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.
^ " Migrations of Early Culture," p. 37.
" Dr. Alan Gardiner (Da vies and Gardiner, " The Tomb of Amen-
emhet," 1915, p. 83, footnote) has, 1 think, overlooked certain statements in
my writings and underestimated the antiquity of the embalmer's art ; for
he attributes to me the opinion that "mummification was a custom of rela-
tively late growth ".
The presence in China of the characteristically Egyptian beliefs con-
cerning the animation of statues (de Groot, op. cit. pp. 339-356), whereas
the practice of mummification, though not wholly absent, is not obtrusive,
might perhaps be interpreted by some scholars as evidence in favour of the
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 21
quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from the beginning the \
embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert the mummy
itseif into a simulacrum of the deceased. When he realized that
his technical skill was not adequate to enable him to accomplish this i
double aim, he fell back upon the device of making a more perfect
and realistic portrait statue apart from the mummy. But, as I have
already pointed out, he never completely renounced his ambition of
transforming the mummy itself ; and in the time of the New Empire
he actually attained the result which he had kept in view for nearly j
twenty centuries.
In these remarks I have been referring only to funerary portradt
statues. Centuries before the attempt was made to fashion them
modellers had been making of clay and stone representations of cattle
and human beings, which have been found not only in Predynastic
graves in Egypt but also in so-called " Upper Palaeolithic" deposits
in Europe.
But the fashioning of realistic and Ufe-size human portrait-statues
for funerary purposes was a new art, which gradually developed in
the way I have tried to depict. No doubt the modellers made use
of the skill they had acquired in the practice of the older art of rough
impressionism.
Once the statue was made a stone-house (the serdaU) was pro- I
vided for it above ground. ' As the dolmen is a crude copy of the
se7'dab - it can be claimed as one of the ultimate results of the practice
development of the custom of making statues independently of mummifica-
tion. But such an inference is untenable. Not only is it the fact that in
most parts o\ the world the practices of making statues and mummifying the
dead are found in association the one with the other, but also in China the
essential beliefs concerning the dead are based upon the supposition that
the body is fully preserved {sec de Groot, chap. XV.). It is quite evident
that the Chinese customs have been derived directly or indirectly from
some people who mummified their dead as a regular practice. There can
be no doubt that the ultimate source of their inspiration to do these things
was Egypt.
I need mention only one of many Identical peculiarities that makes this
quite certain. De Groot says it is " strange to see Chinese fancy depict
the souls of the viscera as distinct individuals with animal forms" (p. 71).
The same custom prevailed in Egypt, where the "souls" or protective
deities were first given animal forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty (Reisner).
' The Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground,'
because the house is exposed by excavation.
- Oh. cit. supra, Ridgeway Essays ; also Man, 1913, p. 193.
22 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
of mummification. It is clear that the conception of the possibility of
a life beyond the grave assumed a more concrete form when it was
realized that the body itself could be rendered incorruptible and its
distinctive traits could be kept alive by means of a portrait statue.
There are reasons for supposing that primitive man did not realize or
contemplate the possibility of his own existence coming to an end.^
Even when he witnessed the death of his fellows he does not appear
to have appreciated the fact that it was really the end of life and not
merely a kind of sleep from which the dead might awake. But if
the corpse were destroyed or underwent a process of natural dis-
integration the fact was brought home to him that death had occurred.
If these considerations, which early Egyptian literature seems to suggest,
be borne in mind, the view that the preservation of the body from
corruption implied a continuation of existence becomes intelligible.
At first the subterranean chambers in which the actual body was
housed were developed into a many-roomed house for the deceased,
complete in every detail." But when the statue took over the function
of representing the deceased, a dwelling was provided for it above
ground. This developed into the temple where the relatives and
friends of the dead came and made the offerings of food which were
regarded as essential for the maintenance of existence.
The evolution of the temple was thus the direct outcome of the
ideas that grew up in connexion with the preservation of the dead.
For at first it was nothing more than the dwelling place of the re-
animated dead. But when, for reasons which I shall explain later
(see p. 30), the dead king became deified, his temple of offerings
became the building where food and drink were presented to the god,
not merely to maintain his existence, but also to restore his conscious-
ness, and so afford an opportunity for his successor, the actual king,
to consult him and obtain his advice and help. The presentation of
offerings and the ritual procedures for animating and restoring con-
sciousness to the dead king were at first directed solely to these ends.
But in course of time, as their original purpose became obscured, these
services in the temple altered in character, and their meaning became
^ See Alan H. Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.
^ See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my statement in the
Report of the British Association for 1914, p. 215.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 23
rationalized into acts of homage and worship, and of prayer and
supplication, and in much later times, acquired an ethical and moral
significance that was wholly absent from the original conception of
the temple services. The earliest idea of the temple as a place of
offering has not been lost sight of. Even in our times the offertory
still finds a place in temple services.
The Significance of Libations. ..
The central idea of this lecture was suggested by Mr. Aylward
M. Blackman's important discovery of the actual meaning of incense
and libations to the Egyptians themselves.^ The earliest body of
literature preserved from any of the peoples of antiquity is comprised
in the texts inscribed in the subterranean chambers of the Sakkara
Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents, written
forty-five centuries ago, were first brought to light in modern times in
1880-81 ; and since the late Sir Gaston Maspero published the first
translation of them, many scholars have helped in the task of elucidat-
ing their meaning. But it remained for Blackman to discover the ex-
planation they give of the origin and significance of the act of pouring
out libations. " The general meaning of these passages is quite clear.
The corpse of the deceased is dry and shrivelled. To revivify it the
vital fluids that have exuded from it [in the process of mummification]
must be restored, for not till then will life return and the heart beat
again. This, so the texts show us, was believed to be accomplished
by offering libations to the accompaniment of incantations ' {pp. at.
p. 70).
In the first three passages quoted by Blackman from the Pyramid
Texts " the libations are said to be the actual fluids that have issued
from the corpse". In the next four quotations "a different notion is
introduced. It is not the deceased's own exudations that are to revive
his shrunken frame but those of a divine body, the [god's fluid] ^ that
^ " The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and Temple
Ritual," Zeitschriftfdr AgvptiscJie Spmche und Alterlmnskiinde, Bd, 50,
1912, p. 69.
- Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds
the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in a footnote:
" The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from Osiris. The
expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this belief — the dead " [in the
Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate if he had said the dead
24 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
came from the corpse of Osiris himself, the juices that dissolved from
his decaying flesh, which are communicated to the dead sacrament-
wise under the form of these libations.
This dragging-in of Osiris is especially significant. For the analogy
of the life-giving pov/er of w^ater that is specially associated with Osiris
played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as
water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate
and come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general
biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time,
and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received specific
application to man long before the idea of libations developed. For,
in the development of the cult of Osiris ^ the general fertilizing power
king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were found] " being usually
identified with Osiris — since the water used in the libations was Nile
water."
^ The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found summarized
in the latest edition of " The Golden Bough " by Sir James Frazer. But
in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of evidence it is
necessary to call particular attention to the fact that Sir James Frazer s
interpretation is penneated with speculations based upon the modern
ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar customs and beliefs
without cultural contact between the different localities where such similar-
ities make their appearance.
The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities
are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate (see
above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are other ob-
jections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating article upon
Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir James Frazer's
"The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the History of
Oriental Religion," Journal of Egyptian Jirducology, Vol. II, 1915, p.
122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was primarily a king, and
that " it is always as a dead king," " the role of the living king being invari-
ably played by Horus, his son and heir ".
He states further: "What Egyptologists wish to know about Osiris
beyond anything else is how and by what means he became associated
with the processes of vegetable life ". An examination of the literature
relating to Osiris and the large series of homologous deities in other countries
(which exhibit prima facie evidence of a common origin) suggests the idea
that the king who first introduced the practice of systematic irrigation there-
by laid the foundation of his reputation as a beneficent reformer. When,
for reasons which I shall discuss later on (see p. 220), the dead king be-
came deified, his fame as the controller of water and the fertilization of the
earth became apotheosized also. I venture to put forward this suggestion
onlv because none of the alternative hypotheses that have been propounded
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 25
of water when applied to the soil found specific exemplification in the
potency of the seminal fluid to fertilize human beings. Malinowski
has pointed out that certain Papuan people, who are ignorant of the
fact that women are fertilized by sexual connexion, believe that they
can be rendered pregnant by rain falling upon them {pp. cit. infra).
The study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it abundantly clear that
in the distant past which I am now discussing no clear distinction was
made between fertilization and vitalization, between bringing new life
into being and reanimating the body which had once been alive.
The process of fertilization of the female and animating a corpse or a
statue were regarded as belonging to the same category of biological
processes. The sculptor who carved the portrait- statues for the
Egyptian's tomb was called saiikk, "he who causes to live," and
"the word 'to fashion' (w.t) a statue is to all appearances identical
with ?ns, ' to give birth ' "/
Thus the Egyptians themselves expressed in words the ideas which
an independent study of the ethnological evidence showed many other
peoples to entertain, both in ancient and modern times."
The interpretation of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of
less cultured modern peoples indicate that our expressions : "to give
birth," "to give life," "to maintain life," "to ward off death," "to
insure good luck," " to prolong life," " to give life to the dead," " to
animate a corpse or a representation of the dead," " to give fertility,
" to impregnate," "to create," represent a series of specializations of
meaning which were not clearly differentiated the one from the other
in early times or among relatively primitive modern people.
seem to be in acccordance with, or to offer an adequate explanation of, the
body of known facts concerning Osiris.
It is a remarkable fact that in his lectures on " The Development of
Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," which are based upon his own
studies of the Pyramid Texts, and are an invaluable storehouse of informa-
tion, Professor J. H. Breasted should have accepted Sir James Frazer's views.
These seem to me to be altogether at variance with the renderings of the
actual Egyptian texts and to confuse the exposition.
^ Dr. Alan Gardiner, quoted in my " Migrations of Early Culture,"
p. 42 : see also the same scholar's remarks in Davies and Gardiner, " The
Tomb of Amenemhet," 1915, p. 57, and " A new Masterpiece of Egyptian
Sculpture," The Journal of Egyptian Arclueologv, Vol. IV, Part I,
Jan., 1917.
"See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of
Early Culture," 1917, Manchester University Press.
26 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The evidence brought together in Jackson's work clearly suggests
that at a very early period in human history, long before the ideas that
found expression in the Osiris story had materialized, men entertained
in all its literal crudity the belief that the external organ of reproduc-
tion from which the child emerged at birth was the actual creator of
the child, not merely the giver of birth but also the source of life.
The widespread tendency of the human mind to identify similar
objects and attribute to them the powers of the things they mimic led
primitive men to assign to the cowry-shell all these life-giving and
birth-giving virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to assist at
birth, to maintain life, to ward off danger, to ensure the life hereafter,
to bring luck of any sort. Now, as the giver of birth, the cowry-
shell also came to be identified with, or regarded as, the mother and
creator of the human family ; and in course of time, as this belief
became rationalized, the shell's maternity received visible expression
and it became personified as an actual woman, the Great Mother, at
first nameless and with ill-defined features. But at a later period,
when the dead king Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity,
and a god emerged with the form of a man, the vagueness of the
Great Mother who had been merely the personified cowry-shell soon
disappeared and the amulet assumed, as Hathor, the form of a real
woman, or, for reasons to be explained later, a cow.
The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent
conception of the water-controlling god, Osiris ; and his powers of
fertility were enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes oi
Hathor
Early Biological Theories.
Before the full significance of these procedures can be appreciated
it is essential to try to get at the back of the Proto- Egyptian's mind
and to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want
to make it clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse
or the statue was merely a specific application of the general principles
of biology v/hich were then current, it was no mere childish make-
believe or priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a
means of animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which
the Proto- Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis ;
and their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the dead is to be
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 27
regarded in the same light as any scientific inference which is made
at the present time to give a specific application of some general theory
considered to be well founded. The Proto- Egyptians clearly be-
lieved in the validity of the general biological theory of the life-giving
properties of water. Many facts, no doubt quite convincing to them,
testified to the soundness of their theory. They accepted the principle
with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's
Law of Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of
Species, and applied it to explain many phenomena or to justify
certain procedures, which in the light of fuller knowledge seem to
modern people puerile and ludicrous. But the early people obviously
took these procedures seriously and regarded their actions as rational.
The fact that their early biological theory was inadequate ought not
to mislead modern scholars and encourage them to fall into the error
of supposing that the ritual of libations was not based upon a serious
inference. Modern scientists do not accept the whole of Darwin's
teaching, or possibly even Newton's " Law," but this does not mean
that in the past innumerable inferences have been honestly and con-
fidently made in specific application of these general principles.
It is important, then, that 1 should examine more closely the
Proto- Egyptian body of doctrine to elucidate the mutual influence of
it and the ideas suggested by the practice of mummification. It is
not known where agriculture was first practised or the circumstances
which led men to appreciate the fact that plants could be cultivated.
In many parts of the world agriculture can be carried on without
artificial irrigation, and even without any adequate appreciation on the
part of the farmer of the importance of water. But when it came to
be practised under such conditions as prevail in Egypt and Mesopo-
tamia, the cultivator would soon be forced to realize that water was
essential for the growth of plants, and that it was inoperative to devise
artificial means by which the soil might be irrigated. It is not known
where or by whom this cardinal fact first came to be appreciated,
whether by the Sumerians or the Egyptians or by some other people.
But it is known that in the earliest records both of Egypt and Sumer
the most significant manifestations of a ruler's wisdom were the making
of irrigation canals and the controlling of water. Important as these
facts are from their bearing upon the material prospects of the people,
they had an infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the
28 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
beliefs of mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural
phenomenon that the earth became fertile when water was applied
to it, and that seed burst into life under the same influence, the early
biologist formulated the natural and not wholly illogical idea that
water was the repository of life-giving powers. Water was equally
necessary for the production of life and for the maintenance of life.
At an early stage in the development of this biological theoiy
man and other animals were brought within the scope of the
ceneralization. For the drinking of water was a condition of existence
in animals. The idea that water played a part in reproduction was
co-related with this fact.
Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia,
New Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the
process of animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological
role of fertilization.^
There are widespread indications throughout the world that the
appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired
at a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult
to believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization
in animals could long have remained unknown when men became
breeders of cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that
the knowledge was fully appreciated at the period when the earliest
picture- symbols were devised, for the verb " to beget " is represented
by the male organs of generation. But, as the domestication of
animals may have been earlier than the invention of agriculture, it is
possible that the appreciation of the fertilizing powers of the male
animal may have been definitely more ancient than the earliest bio-
logical theory of the fertilizing power of water.
I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge
that animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was cer-
tainly brought within the scope of the wider generalization that
water itself was endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water
fertilized the earth, so the semen fertilized the female. Water was
^ Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, " The Northern Tribes of Central
Australia " ; "Across Australia" ; and Spencer's " Native Tribes of the
Northern Territory of Australia ". For a very important study of the
whole problem with special reference to New Guinea, see B, Malinowski,
" Baloma : the Spirits of the Dead," etc.. Journal of the Royal Anthropo-
logical Institute, 1916, p. 415.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 29
necessary for the maintenance of life in plants and was also essential
in the form of drink for animals. As both the earth and women
could be fertilized by water they were homologized one with the
other. The earth came to be regarded as a woman, the Great
Mother.' When the fertilizing water came to be personified in the
person of Osiris his consort Isis was identified with the earth which
was fertilized by water."
One of the earliest pictures of an Egyptian king represents him
using the hoe to inaugurate the making of an irrigation-canal."* This
was the typical act of benevolence on the part of a wise ruler. It is
not unlikely that the earliest organization of a community under a
definite leader may have been due to the need for some systematized
control of irrigation. In any case the earliest rulers of Egypt and
Sumer were essentially the controllers and regulators of the water
supply and as such the givers of fertility and prosperity.
Once men first consciously formulated the belief that death was
not the end of all things/ that the body could be re-animated and
' The idea of the earth's maternal function spread throughout the
greater part of the world.
- With reference to the assimilation of the conceptions of human fer-
tilization and watering the soil and the widespread idea among the ancients
of regarding the male as "he who irrigates," Canon van Hoonacker gave
M. Louis Siret the following note: —
" In Assyrian the cuneiform sign for water is also used, inter alia, to
express the idea of begetting {banii). Compare with this the references
from Hebrew and Arabic writings. In Isaiah xlviii. I , we read ' Hear ye
this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are
come forth out of the waters of Judah ' ; and in Numbers xxiv. 7, ' Water
shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters '.
" The Hebrew verb (shangal) which denotes sexual intercourse has,
in Arabic {sadjala), the meaning ' to spill water '. In the Koran, Sur. 36,
V. 6, the word maun (water) is used to designate semen " (L. Siret,
" Questions de Chronologic et d' Ethnographic Iberiques," Tome 1, 1913,
p. 250).
^ Quibell, " Hieraconpolis, Vol, I, 260, 4. . v^^
^ In using this phrase I want to make a clear distinction between the
phase of culture in which it had never occurred to man that, in his indi- ^ "
vidual case, life would come to an end, and the more enlightened stage, * .
in which he fully realized that death would inevitably be his fate, but that
in spite of it his real existence would continue.
It is clear that at quite an early stage in his history man appreciated
the fact that he could kill an animal or his fellow-man. But for a long time
he failed to realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process of me-
30 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
consciousness and the will restored, it was natural that a wise ruler
who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death
continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with
age ; his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized ;
he would become an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose
help be obtained in grave crises. In other words the dead king would
be " deified," or at any rate credited with the ability to confer even
greater boons than he was able to do when alive.
It is no mere coincidence that the first " god " should have been
a dead king, Osiris, nor that he controlled the waters of irrigation and
was specially interested in agriculture. Nor, for the reasons that I
have already suggested, is it surprising that he should have had phallic
attributes, and in himself have personified the virile powers of fer-
tilization.'
In attempting to explain the origin of the ritual procedures of
burning incense and offering libations it is essential to realize that the
creation of the first deities was not primarily an expression of religious
belief, but rather an application of science to national affairs. It was
the logical interpretation of the dominant scientific theory of the time
for the practical benefit of the living ; or in other words, the means
devised for securing the advice and the active help of wise rulers after
their death. It was essentially a matter of practical politics and ap-
plied science. It became " religion " only when the advancement of
knowledge superseded these primitive scientific theories and left them
as soothing traditions for the thoughts and aspirations of mankind to
cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of know-
ledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and
had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to
man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave, A web of
moral precept and the allurement of hcpe had been so woven around
them that no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory
chanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a fellow-man, would
not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many people to be stiil
in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once the body begins to
disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can entirely repress the
idea of death. But to primitive people the preservation of the body is
equally a token that existence has not come to an end. The corpse is
merely sleeping.
^ Breasted, op. cit. , p. 28.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 31
beliefs ; and they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by
which they were originally built up has been demolished and forgotten
several millennia ago.
It is not known where Osiris was born. In other countries there
are homologous deities, such as Ea, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis,
which are certainly manifestations of the same idea and sprung from
the same source. Certain recent writers assume that the germ of the
Osiris-conception was introduced into Egypt from abroad. But if so,
nothing is known for certain of its place of origin. In any case there
can be no doubt that the distinctive features of Osiris, his real person-
ality and character, were developed in Egypt.
For reasons which i have suggested already it is probable that the
significance of water m cultivation was not realized until cereals were
cultivated in some such place as Babylonia or Egypt. But there are
very definite legends of the Babylonian Ea coming from abroad by
way of the Persian Gulf.' The early history of Tammuz is veiled in
obscurity.
Somewhere in South Western Asia or North Eastern Africa, pro-
bably within a few years of the development of the art of agriculture,
some scientific theorist, interpreting the body of empirical knowledge
acquired by cultivating cereals, propounded the view that water was
the great life-giving element. This view eventually found expression
in the Osiiis-group of legends.
This theory found specific application in the invention of libations
and incense. These practices in turn reacted upon the general body
of doctrine and gave it a more sharply defined form. The dead king
also became more real when he was represented by an actual em-
balmed body and a life-Hke statue, sitting in state upon his throne and
holding in his hands the emblems of his high office.
Thus while, in the present state of knowledge, it would be un-
justifiable to claim that the Osiris-group of deities was invented in
Egypt, and certainly erroneous to attribute the general theory of the
fertilizing properties of water to the practice of embalming, it is true
that the latter was responsible for giving Osiris a much more concrete
^ The possibility, or even the probability, must be borne in mind that
the legend of Ea arising from the waters may be merely another way of
expressing his primary attribute as the personification of the fertilizing
powers of water.
■r
32 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
and clearly-defined shape, of " making a god in the image of man,"
and for giving to the water-theory a much richer and fuller significance
than it had before.
The symbolism so created has had a most profound influence
h upon the thoughts and aspirations of the human race. For Osiris
: was the prototype of all the gods ; his ritual was the basis of all
religious ceremonial ; his priests who conducted the animating cere-
monies were the pioneers of a long series of ministers who for more
than fifty centuries, in spite of the endless variety of details of their
ritual and the character of their temples, have continued to perform
ceremonies that have undergone remarkably little essential change.
Though the chief functions of the priest as the animator of the god
and the restorer of his consciousness have now fallen into the back-
ground in most religions, the ritual acts (the incense and libations, the
offerings of food and blood and the rest) still persist in many countries :
the priest still appeals by prayer and supplication for those benefits,
which the Proto- Egyptian aimed at securing when he created Osiris
as a god to give advice and help. The prayer for rain is one of the
earliest forms of religious appeal, but the request for a plentiful inun-
dation was earlier still.
I have already said that in using the terms "god" and "religion"
with reference to the earliest form of Osiris and the beliefs that grew
up with reference to him a potent element of confusion is introduced.
During the last fifty centuries the meanings of those two words
have become so complexly enriched with the glamour of a mystic
symbolism that the Proto- Egyptian's conception of Osiris and the
Osirian beliefs must have been vastly different from those implied
in the words "god" and "religion" at the present time. Osiris
was regarded as an actual king who had died and been reanimated.
In other words he was a man who could bestow upon his former
subjects the benefits of his advice and help, but could also display
such human weaknesses as malice, envy, and all uncharitableness.
Much modern discussion completely misses the mark by the failure
to recognize that these so-called "gods" were really men, equally
capable of acts of beneficence and of outbursts of hatred, and as one
or the other aspect became accentuated the same deity could become
a Vedic (ileva or an Avestan d^va, a detis or a devil^ a god of kind-
ness or a demon of wickedness.
The acts which the earliest " gods " were supposed to perform
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 33
were not at first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the
boons v/hich the mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by
controlling the waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It
was only when his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accum-
ulated glory (and the growth of knowledge revealed the insecurity
of the scientific basis upon which his fame was built up) that a priest-
hood, reluctant to abandon any of the attributes which had captured
the popular imagination, made it an obligation of belief to accept these
supernatural powers of the gods for which the student of natural phen-
omena refused any longer to be a sponsor. This was the parting of
the ways between science and religion ; and thenceforth the attributes
of the " gods " became definitely and admittedly superhuman.
As I have already stated (p. 23) the original object of the offering
of libations was thus clearly for the purpose of animating the statue of
the deceased and so enabling him to continue the existence which had
merely been interrupted by the incident of death. In course of time,
hovv^ever, as definite gods gradually materialized and came to be re-
presented by statues, they also had to be vitalized by offerings of
water h'om time to time. Thus the pouring out of libations came to
be an act of worship of the deity ; and in this form it has persisted
until our own times in many civilized countries.
But not only was water regarded as a means of animating the dead,
or statues representing the dead, and an appropriate act of worship, in
that it vitalized an idol and the god dwelling in it was thus able to
hear and answer supplications. Water also became an essential part
of any act of ritual rebii'th.^ As a baptism it also symbolized the
giving of life. The initiate was re-born into a new communion of faith.
In scores of other ways the same conception of the life-giving properties
of water was responsible for as many applications of the use of liba-
tions in inaugurating new enterprises, such as "baptising" ships and
blessing buildings. It is important to remember that, according to early
Egyptian beliefs, the continued existence of the dead was wholly de-
pendent upon the attentions of the living. Unless this animating
ceremony was performed not merely at the time of the funeral, but also
at stated periods afterwards, and unless the friends of the deceased
^ This occurred at a later epoch when the attributes of the water-con-
trolling deity of fertility became confused with those of the birlh-giving
mother goddess {vide infra, p. 40).
3
34 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
periodically supplied food and drink, such a continuation of existence
was impossible.
The development of these beliefs had far-reaching effects in other
directions. The idea that a stone statue could be animated ultimately
became extended to mean that the dead man could enter into and
dwell in a block of stone, which he could leave or return to at will.
From this arose the beliefs, which spread far and \vide, that the dead,
ancestors, kings, or deified kings, dwelt in stones ; and that they
could be consulted as oracles, who gave advice and counsel. The
acceptance of this idea that the dead could be reanim.ated in a stone
statue no doubt prepared the minds of the people to credit the further
belief, which other circumstances were responsible for creating, that
men could be turned into stone. In the next chapter I shall explain
how these petrifaction stones developed.^
All the rich crop of myths concerning men and animals dwelling
in stones which are to be found encircling the globe from Ireland to
America, can be referred back to these early Egyptian attempts to solve
the mysteries of death, and to acquire the means of circumventing fate.
These beliefs at first may have concerned human beings only.
But in course of time, as the duty of revictualling an increasingly large
number of tombs and temples tended to tax the resources of the
people, the practice developed of substituting for the real things models,
or even pictures, of food-animals, vegetables, and other requisites of
the dead. And these objects and pictures were restored to life or
reality by means of a ritual which was essentially identical with that
used for animating the statue or the mummy of the deceased himself."
It is well worth considering whether this may not be one of the
basal factors in explanation of the phenomena which the late Sir
Edward Tylor labelled "animism".
So far from being a phase of culture through which many, if not
all, peoples have passed in the course of their evolution, may it not
have been merely an artificial conception of certain things, which was
^ For a large series of these stories see E. Sidney Hartland's " Legend
of Perseus ". But even more instructive, as revealing the intimate con-
nexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the preservation of the body,
see J. J. M. de Groot, " The ReHgious System of China," Vol. IV, Book
II, 190L
^In this connexion see de Groot, op. at. pp. 336 and 415.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 35
given so definite a form in Egypt, for the specific reasons at which I
have just hinted, and from there spread far and wide ?
Against this view may be urged the fact that our own children
talk in an animistic fashion. But is not this due in some measure to
the unconscious influence of their elders ? Or at most is it not a
vague and ill-defined attitude of anthropomorphism necessarily in-
volved in all spoken languages, which is vastly different from what
the ethnologist understands by " animism" ^ ?
But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt that the
" animism " of the early Egyptians assumed its precise and clear-cut
distinctive features as the result of the growth of ideas suggested by
the attempts to make mummies and statues of the dead and symbolic
offerings of food and other funerary requisites.
Thus incidentally there grew up the belief in a power of magic by
means of which these make-believe offerings could be transformed into
realities. But it is important to emphasize the fact that originally the
conviction of the genuineness of this transubstantiation was a logical
and not unnatural inference based upon the attempt to interpret
natural phenomena, and then to influence them by imitating what
were regarded as the determining factors."
in China these ideas still retain much of their primitive influence
and directness of expression. Referring to the Chinese " belief in
the identity of pictures or images with the beings they represent " de
Groot states that the kivan sknh or " magic art " is a '' main branch
of Chinese witchcraft ". It consists essentially of " the infusion of a
soul, life, and activity into likenesses of beings, to thus render them fit
to work in some direction desired . . . this infusion is effected by
blovving or breathing, or spurting water over the likeness : indeed
breath or khi, or water from the mouth imbued with breath, is
identical with ycing substance or life." ^
^ The child certainly resembles primitive man in the readiness with
v/hich it attributes to even the crudest models of animals or human beings
the feelmgs of living creatures.
- It became " magical " in our sense of the term only when the
grovvth of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were inade-
quate to attain the desired end ; while the " magician " continued to make
the pretence that he could attain that end by ultra-physical means.
" De Groot, op, cit. p. 356.
36 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Incense.
So far I have referred in detail only to the offering of libations.
But this was only one of several procedures for animating statues,
mummies, and food- offerings. I have still to consider the ritual pro-
cedures of incense-burning and " opening the mouth ".
I From Mr. Blackman's translations of the Egyptian texts it is clear
Ithat the burning of incense was intended to restore to the statue (or
the mummy) the odour of the living body, and that this was part of
the procedure considered necessary to animate the statue. He says
" the belief about incense [which is explained by a later document,
the Ritual of Ainon\ apparently does not occur in the Old King-
dom religious texts that are preserved to us, yet it may quite well be
as ancient as that period. That is certainly Erman's view " {pp, cit.
p. 75).
He gives the following translation of the relevant passage in the
Ritual of Avion {yA\, 11): "The god comes with body adorned
which he has fumigated with the eye of his body, the incense of the
god which has issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god which has
fallen to the ground, which he has given to all the gods. ... It is the
Horus eye. If it lives, the people live, thy flesh lives, thy members are
vigorous" {op. at. p. 72). In his comments upon this passage Mr.
Blackman states : "In the light of the Pyramid libation-formulae the
expressions in this text are quite comprehensible. Like the libations
the grains of incense are the exudations of a divinity,^ * the fluid
which issued from his flesh,' the god's sweat descending to the ground.
. . . Here incense is not merely the 'odour of the god,' but the
grains of resin are said to be the god's sweat " {pp. cit. p. 72). " Both
rites, the pouring of libations and the burning of incense, are performed
for the same purpose — to revivify the body [or the statue] of god
and man by restoring to it its lost moisture" (p. 75).
In attempting to reconstitute the circumstances which led to the
^ As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the divinity of the
incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for, the practice of incense-
burning. As one of the means by which the resurrection was attained
incense became a giver of divinity ; and by a simple process of rationaliza-
tion the tree which produced this divine substance became a god.
The reference to the " eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-
giving god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, i.e. the god with
whom the dead king is identified.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 37
invention of incense-burning as a ritual act, the nature of the problem
to be solved must be recalled. Among the most obtrusive evidences
of death were the coldness of the skin, the lack of perspiration and of
the odour of the living. It is important to realize vs^hat the phrase
" odour of the living " v^^ould convey to the Proto- Egyptian. From
the earliest Predynastic times in Egypt it had been the custom to
make extensive use of resinous material as an essential ingredient
(what a pharmacist would call the adhesive "vehicle") of cos-
metics. One of the results of this practice in a hot climate must
have been the association of a strong aroma of resin or balsam with a
living person.' Whether or not it was the practice to burn incense
to give pleasure to the living is not known. The fact that such a
procedure was customary among their successors may mean that it
was really archaic ; or on the other hand the possibility must not be
overlooked that it may be merely the later vulgarization of a practice
which originally was devised for purely ritual purposes. The burning
of incense before a corpse or statue was intended to convey to it the
v/armth, the sweat, and the odour of life.
When the belief became well established that the burning of in-
cense was potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to
the dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the
sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense
consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express it,
" their sweat," the divine power of animation in course of time became
transferred to the trees. They v/ere no longer merely the source of
the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity whose
drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.
The reason why the deity which dwelt in these trees was usually
identified with the Mother-Goddess will become clear in the course of
the subsequent discussion (p. 38). It is probable that this was due
mainly to the geographical circumstance that the chief source of incense
was Southern Arabia, which was also the home of the primitive
goddesses of fertility. For they were originally nothing more than
personifications of the life-giving cowry amulets from the Red Sea.
Thus Robertson Smith's statement that " the value of the gum of
the acacia as an amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of
^ It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion of the use of
scents and unguents, which is closely related to this question.
38 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is a woman " ^ is probably an
inversion of cause and e^ect. It was the value attached to the gum
that conferred animation upon the tree. The rest of the legend is
merely a rationalization based upon the idea that the tree was identi-
fied with the mother-goddess. The same criticism applies to his further
contention (p. 427) with reference to " the religious value of incense,"
which he claims to be due to the fact that " like the gum of the
samora (acacia) tree, ... it was an animate or divine plant ".
Many factors played a part in the development of tree-worship,
but it is probable the origin of the sacredness of trees must be assigned
to the fact that it was acquired from the incense and the aromatic
woods which were credited with the power of animating the dead.
But at a very early epoch many other considerations helped to confirm
and extend the conception of deification. When Osiris was buried, a
sacred sycamore grew up as " the visible symbol of the imperishable
life of Osiris "." But the sap of trees was brought into relationship
with life-giving water and thus constituted another Hnk with Osiris-
The sap was also regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that
exuded as the sweat. Just as the water of libation was regarded as
the fluid of the body of Osiris, so also, by this process of rationaliza-
tion, the incense came to possess a similar significance.
For reasons precisely analogous to those already explained in the
case of libations, the custom of burning incense, from being originally a
ritual act for animating the funerary statue, ultimately developed inio
an act of homage to the deity.
But it also acquired a special significance when the cult of sky-
gods developed,^ for the smoke of the burning incense then came 1o
be regarded as the vehicle which wafted the deceased's soul to the
sky or conveyed there the requests of the dwellers upon earth. ^
"The soul of a human being is generally conceived |by the
^ " The Religion of the Semites," p. 133. "Breasted, p. 28.
■' For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).
^ It is also worth considering whether the extension of this idea may
not have been responsible for originating the practice of cremation — as a
device for transferring, not merely the animating incense and the supplica-
tions of the living, but also the body of the deceased to the sky-world.
This, of course, did not happen in Egypt, but in some other country which
adopted the Egyptian practice of incense-burning, but was not hampered by
the religious conservatism that guarded the sacredness of the corpse.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 39
Chinese] as possessing the shape and characteristics of a human being,
and occasionally those of an animal ; . . . the spirit of an animal is the
shape of this animal or of some being with human attributes and speech.
But plant spirits are never conceived as plant-shaped, nor to have plant-
characters . , . whenever forms are given them, they are mostly
represented as a man, a woman, or a child, and often also as an animal,
dwelling in or near the plant, and emerging from it at times to do
harm, or to dispense blessings. . . . Whether conceptions on the ani-
mation of plants have never developed in Chinese thought and worship
before ideas about human ghosts . . . had become predominant in
mind and custom, we cannot say : but the matter seems probable "
(De Groot, op. cit. pp. 272, 273). Tales of trees that shed blood
and that cry out when hurt are common in Chinese literature (p. 274)
[as also in Southern Arabia] ; also of trees that lodge or can change
into maidens of transcendant beauty (p. 276).
It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men
taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human
being is usually a woman, accompanied by 'a fox, a dog, an old
raven or the like " (p. 276).
Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel
Harris believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,' the
animation of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with
a beautiful maiden and a dog."
The immemorial custom of planting trees on graves in China is
supposed by De Groot (p. 277) to be due to " the desire to strengthen
the soul of the buried person, thus to save his body from corruption,
for which reason trees such as pines and cypresses, deemed to be
bearers of great vitality for being possessed of more shcn than other
trees, were used preferably for such purposes". But may not such
beliefs also be an expression of the idea that a tree growing upon a
grave is developed from and becomes the personification of the de-
ceased ? The significance of the selection of pines and cypresses may
be compared to that associated with the so-called " cedars " in Baby-
lonia, Egypt, and Phoenicia, and the myrrh- and frankincense- pro-
ducing trees in Arabia and East Africa. They have come to be
^ "The Ascent of Olympus," 1917.
- For a collection of stones relating to human beings, generally women,
dwelling in trees, see Hartland's " Legend of Perseus ".
40 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
accredited with " soul-substance," since their use in mummification,
and as incense and for making coffins, has made them the means for
attaining a future existence. Hence in course of time they came to be
regarded as charged with the spirit of vitality, the shen or " soul-
substance ".
In China also it was because the woods of the pine or fir and the
Cyprus were used for making coffins and grave-vaults and that pine-
resin was regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, op.
cit. pp. 296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these
trees. " At an early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted
that animation [of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress^] into them-
selves by consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they
looked upon as coagulated soul -substance, the counterpart of the blood
in men and animals" (p. 296).
In India the amrita, the god's food of immortality, was some-
times regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.
Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined
Mother " Goddess " and the more distinctly anthropoid Water " God,"
which originally developed quite independently the one of the other,
ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many
of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be
shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of
blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the
moon came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation
of Hathor, the supposed influence of the moon over water led to a
further assimilation of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller
of water, which received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiiis.
But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this
address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in
incense- trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the
Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid
of Osiris.
' The fact that the fir and cypress are *' hardy and long-lived " is
not the reason for their being accredited with these life-prolonging qualities.
But once the latter virtues had become attributed to them the fact that the
trees were " hardy and long-lived " may have been used to bolster up the
belief by a process of rationalization.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 41
The Breath of Life.
Although the pouring of libations and the burning of incense
played so prominent a part in the ritual of animating the statue or the
mummy, the most important incident in the ceremony was the " open-
ing of the mouth," which was regarded as giving it the breath of life.
Elsewhere ^ I have suggested that the conception of the heart and
blood as the vehicles of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge may have
been extremely ancient. It is not known when or under what circum-
stances the idea of the breath being the " life" was first entertained.
The fact that in certain primitive systems of philosophy the breath was
supposed to have something to do with the heart suggests that these
beliefs may be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In
some of the rock- pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the
air-passages are represented leading to the heart. But there can be
little doubt that the practice of mummification gave greater definiteness
to the ideas regarding the " heart " and " breath," which eventually
led to a differentiation between their supposed functions.' As the
heart and the blood were obviously present in the dead body they
could no longer be regarded as the " life". The breath was clearly
the " element " the lack of which rendered the body inanimate. It
was therefore regarded as necessaiy to set the heart working. The
heart then came to be looked upon as the seat of knowledge, the organ
that feels and wills during v/aking life. All the pulsating motions of
the body seem to have been regarded, like the act of respiration,
as expressions of the vital principle or " life," which Dutch ethnological
writers refer to as " soul substance". The neighbourhood of certain
joints where the pulse can be felt most readily, and the top of the
head, where pulsation can be felt in the infant's fontanelle, were
therefore regarded by some Asiatic peoples as the places where the
substance of life could leave or enter the body.
It is possible that in ancient times this belief was more widespread
^ " Primitive Man," Proceedings of the British Academy, 1917, p. 4L
It is important to remember that the real meaning of respiration was
quite unknown until modern science revealed the part played by oxygen.
-' The enormous complexity and intricacy of the interrelation between
the functions of the " heart," and the " breath " is revealed in Chinese
philosophy (see de Groot, op. cit. Chapter VII. ititer aiid).
42 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
than it is now. it affords an explanation of the motive for trephining
the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage lor
the " vital essence " to and from the skull.
in his lecture on " The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul," ^ Professor
John Burnet has expounded the meaning of early Greek conceptions
of the soul with rare insight and lucidity. Originally, the word ^/fi>x ?
meant "breath," but, by historical times, it had already been
specialized in two distinct ways. It had come to mean courage in
the first place, and secondly the breath of life, the presence or
absence of which is the most obvious distinction between the animate
and the inanimate, the "ghost" which a man " gives up" at death.
But it may also quit the body temporarily, which explains the pheno-
menon of swooning {kiiro-<\svyia). It seemed natural to suppose it
v/as also the thing that can roam at large when the body is asleep,
and even appear to another sleeping person in his dream. Moreover,
since we can dream of the dead, what then appears to us must be
just what leaves the body at the moment of death. These considera-
tions explain the world-v^ide belief in the " soul" as a sort of double
of the real bodily man, the Egyptian kai,- the \l?X\diXi genius, and the
Greek ^fjvxi-
Now this double is not identical with v, hatever it is in us that
feels and \vills during our waking Ufe. That is generally supposed to
be blood and not breath.
What we feel and perceive have their seat in the heart : they
belong to the body and perish with it.
It is only when the shades have been allowed to drink blood that
consciousness returns to them for a while.
At one time the ^v)(T] was supposed to dwell with the body in
the grave, where it had to be supported by the ofienngs of the sur-
vivors, especially by libations (voaQ.
An Egyptian psychologist has carried the story back long before
the times of which Professor Burnet v^rites. He has explained "his
conception of the functions of the ' heart (mind) and tongue '. ' When
^ Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henrietta Hertz Trust, Pro-
ceediri'^s of the British Academy, Vol. Vll, 26 Jan., 1916.
^ The Egyptian ka, however, was a more complex entity than this
comparison suggests.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 43
the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to
the heart. It is he (the heart) who brings forth eveiy issue and it is
the tongue which repeats the thought of the heart.' " '
"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated
concerning Ptah-Tatenen : ' He is the fashioner of the gods. . . .
He made likenesses of their bodies to the satisfaction of their hearts.
Then the gods entered into their bodies of every wood and every
stone and every metal.' " '
That these ideas are really ancient is shown by the fact that in
the Pyramid Texts I sis is represented conveying the breath of life to
Osiris by "causing a wind with her wings".'' The ceremony of
" opening the mouth " which aimed at achieving this restoration of
the breath of life was the principal part of the ritual procedure be-
fore the statue or mummy. As I have already mentioned (p. 25),
the sculptor who modelled the portrait statue was called " he who
causes to live," and the word " to fashion " a statue is identical with
that which means "to give birth ". The god Ptah created man by
modelling his form in clay. Similarly the life-giving sculptor made
the portrait which was to be the means of securing a perpetuation of
existence, when it was animated by the " opening of the mouth," by
libations and incense.
As the outcome of this process of rationalization in Egypt a vast
crop of creation-legends came into existence, which have persisted
with remarkable completeness until the present day in India, Indonesia,
China, America, and elsewhere. A statue of stone, wood, or clay is
fashioned, and the ceremony of animation is performed to convey to it
the breath of life, which in many places is supposed to be brought
down from the sky.^
In the Egyptian beliefs, as well as in most of the world-wide
legends that were derived from them, the idea assumed a definite
form that the vita! principle (often referred to as the " soul," " soul-
substance," or " double ") could exist apart from the body. Whatever
^ Breasted, op. cit. pp. 44 and 45.
- Op. cit. pp. 45 end 46. ■' Ibid. p. 28.
* W. J. Perry has collected the evidence preserved in a remarkable
series of Indonesian legends in his recent book, "The Megalithic Cul-
ture of Indonesia ". But the fullest exposition of the whole subject is
provided in the Chinese literature summarized by de Groot (op. at.).
44 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
the explanation, it is clear that the possibility of the existence of the
vital principle apart from the body was entertained. It was supposed
that it could return to the body and temporarily reanimate it. It
could enter into and dwell within the stone representation of the
deceased. Sometimes this so-called " soul " was identified ^ with the
breath of life, which could enter into the statue as the result of the
ceremony of "opening the mouth".
It has been commonly assumed by Sir Edward Tylor and those
who accept his theory of animism that the idea of the " soul " was
based upon the attempts to interpret the phenomena of dreams and
shadows, to which Burnet has referred in the passage quoted above.
The fact that when a person is sleeping he may dream of seeing absent
people and of having a variety of adventures is explained by many
peoples by the hypothesis that these are real experiences which befell
the "soul" when it wandered abroad during its owner's sleep. A
man's shadow or his reflection in water or a mirror has been inter-
preted as his double. But what these speculations leave out of
account is the fact that these dream- and shadow-phenomena were
probably merely the predisposing circumstances which helped in the
development of (or the corroborative details which were added to and,
by rationalization, incorporated in) the " soul-theory," which other
circumstances were responsible for creating."
I have already called attention (p. 5) to the fact that in many
of the psychological speculations in ethnology too little account is
taken of the enormous complexity of the factors which determine even
the simplest and apparently most obvious and rational actions of men.
1 must again remind the reader that a vast multitude of influences, many
of them of a subconscious and emotional nature, affect men's deci-
sions and opinions. But once some definite state of feeling inclines a
man to a certain conclusion, he will call up a host of other circum-
stances to buttress his decision, and weave them into a complex net of
rationalization. Some such process undoubtedly took place in the
development of "animism"; and though it is not possible yet to
^ See, however, the reservations in the subsequent pages.
" The thorough analysis of the beliefs of any people makes this
abundantly clear. De Groot's monograph is an admirable illustration of
this {op. cit. Chapter Vll.). Both in Egypt and China the conceptions of
the significance of the shadow are later and altogether subsidiary.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 45
reconstruct the whole history of the growth of the idea, there can be
no question that these early strivings after an understanding of the
nature of life and death, and the attempts to put the theories into
practice to reanimate the dead, provided the foundations upon which
has been built up during the last fifty centuries a vast and com-
plex theory of the soul. In the creation of this edifice the thoughts
and the aspirations of countless millions of peoples have played a part :
but the foundation was laid down when the Egyptian king or priest
claimed that he could restore to the dead the "breath of life" and,
by means of the v/and which he called " the great magician," ' could
enable the dead to be born again. The wand is supposed by some
scholars " to be a conventionalized representation of the uterus, so that
its power of giving birth is expressed with literal directness. Such be-
liefs and stories of the "magic wand" are found to-day in scattered
locaUties from the Scottish Highlands to Indonesia and America.
In this sketch i have referred merely to one or two aspects of a con-
ception of vast complexity. But it must be remembered that, once the
mind of man began to play with the idea of a vital essence capable
of existing apart from the body and to identify it with the breath
of life, an iUimitable field was opened up for speculation. The vital
principle could manifest itself in all the varied expressions of human
personality, as well as in all the physiological indications of life. Ex-
perience of dreams led men to believe that the " soul" could also leave
the body temporarily and enjoy varied experiences. But the concrete-
minded Egyptian demanded some physical evidence to buttress these
intangible ideas of the wandering abroad of his vital essence. He
made a statue for it to dwell in after his death, because he was not
able to make an adequately life-like reproduction of the dead man's
features upon the mummy itself or its wrappings. Then he gradually
persuaded himself that the life- sub stance could exist apart from the
body as a "double" or "twin" which animated the statue.
Searching for material evidence to support his faith primitive man
not unnaturally turned to the contemplation of the circumstances of
his birth. All his beliefs concerning the nature of life can ultimately
be referred back to the stoiy of his own origin, his birth or creation.
When an infant is born it is accompanied by the after-birth or
■ Alan H. Gardiner, Davies and Gardiner, op. cit. p. 59.
-F. LI. Griffith, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs," 1898, p. 60.
46 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
placenta to which it is linked by the umbilical cord. The full com-
prehension of the significance of these structures is an achievement of
modern science. To primitive man they were an incomprehensible
marvel. But once he began to play vv^ith the idea that he had a
double, a vital essence in his own shape which could leave the sleeping
body and lead a separate existence, the placenta obviously provided
tangible evidence of its reality. The considerations set forth by
Blackman,^ supplementing those of Moret, Murray and Seligman,
and others, have been claimed as Hnking the placenta with the ka.
Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the
Egyptian word ka, especially during recent years. An excellent
summary of the arguments brought forward by the various disputants
up to 1912 will be found in Moret's " Mysteres Egyptiens ". Since
then more or less contradictory views have been put forward by Alan
Gardiner, Breasted, and Blackman. It is not my intention to inter-
vene in a dispute as to the meaning of certain phrases in ancient litera-
ture ; but there are certain aspects of the problems at issue v/hich are
so intimately related to my main theme as to make some reference to
them unavoidable.
The development of the custom of making statues of the dead
necessarily raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's
two bodies, his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life
on earth his vital principle dwelt in the former, except on those
occasions when the man v/as asleep. His actual body also gave ex-
pression to all the varied attributes of his personality. But after death
the statue became the dwelling place of these manifestations of the
spirit of vitality.
Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoid-
ably created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom
must have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those
elements of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the
time of death could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.
At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin
exactly reproducmg all his features. This double or ka is intimately
associated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's wel-
^ Aylward M. Blackman, " Some Remarks on an Emblem upon the
Head of an Ancient Egyptian Birth-Goddess," Journal of Eiryptian
Archccologv, Vol. Ill, Part 111, July, 1916, p. 199; and ''The Pharaoh's
Placenta and the Moon-God Khons," ibid. Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 235.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 47
fare. In fact Breasted claims that the ka " was a kind of superior
orenius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual in the here-
o o
after" . . . there " he had his abode and awaited the coming of his
earthly companion "/ At death the deceased " goes to his ka, to
the sky". The ka controls and protects the deceased : he brings
him food which they eat together.
It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved
in the conception of the ka: —
{(i) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the
breath of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early
Egyptian physiologist took cognisance.
(/') At the time or birth there came into being along with the
child a "twin " whose destinies were closely linked with the child's.
(i) As the result of animating the statue the deceased also has
restored to him his character, " the sum of his attributes," his indi-
viduality, later raised to the position of a protecting genius or god, a
Providence who watches over his well-being.-
The kci is not simply identical with the breath of life or a;iimus\ <
as Burnet supposes {o/>. at. supra), but has a wider significance.
The adoption of the conception of the ka as a sort of guardian angel
which finds its appropriate habitation in a statue that has been
animated does not necessarily conflict with the view^ so concretely and
unmistakably represented in the tomb-pictures that the ka is also
a double who is born along with the individual.
This material conception of the ka as a double who is born with
and closely linked to the individual is, as Blackman has emphasized,^
very suggestive of Baganda beliefs and rites connected v/ith the placenta.
At death the circumstances of the act of birth are reconstituted, and for
this rebirth the placenta which played an essential part in the original
process is restored to the deceased. May not the original meaning of
the expression " he goes to his ka" be a literal description of this re-
union with his placenta ? The identification of the ka v/ith the moon, the
guardian of the dead man's welfare, may have enriched the symbolism.
' " Religion and Thougiil in Ancient Egypt," p. 52. Breasted denies
that the ka was an element of the personality.
■ For an abstruse discussion or this problem see Alan H. Gardiner,
*' Personification (Egyptian)," Hastings' EncvdoJ'cedia of Religion and
Ethics, pp. 790 and 792.
^ Op. cit. supra.
48 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Blackman makes the suggestion that " on the analogy of the beliefs
entertained by the Hamitic ruling caste in Uganda," according to
Roscoe, " the placenta/ or rather its ghost, would have been supposed
by the Ancient Egyptians to be closely connected with the individual's
personality, as " he maintains was also the case with the god or pro-
tecting genius of the Babylonians." " Unless united with his twin's
[i.e. his placenta's] ghost the dead king was an imperfect deity, i.e. his
directing intelligence was impaired or lacking," presumably because
the placenta was composed of blood, which was regarded as the
material of consciousness and intelligence.
In China, as the quotations from de Groot (see footnote) show, the
placenta when placed under felicitous circumstances is able to ensure
the child a long life and to control his mental and physical welfare.
In view of the claims put forward by Blackman to associate the
placenta with the ka, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion
concerning the fourteen forms of the ka, to which von Bissing assigns
^ Mr. Blackman is puzzled to explain what " possible connexion there
could be between the Pharaoh's placenta and the moon beyond the fact that
it is the custom in Uganda to expose the king's placenta each new moon
and anoint it with butter.
To those readers who follow my argument in the later pages of this
discussion the reasoning at the back of this association should be plain
enough. The moon was regarded as the controller of menstruation. The
placenta (and also the child) was considered to be formed of menstrual
blood. The welfare of the placenta was therefore considered to be under
the control of the moon.
The anointing with butter is an interesting illustration of the close con-
nexion of these lunar and maternal phenomena with the cow.
The placenta was associated with the moon also in China, as the fol-
lowing quotation shows.
According to de Groot {o/>. cit. p. 396), " in the Siao 'rh fang or
Medicament for Babies, by the hand of Ts'ui Hing-kung [died 674 A.D.],
it is said : ' The placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot under
the salutary influences of the sky or the moon ... in order that the child
may be ensured a long life ' ". He then goes on to explain how any inter-
ference with the placenta will entail mental or physical trouble to the child.
The placenta also is used as the ingredient of pills to increase fertility,
facilitate parturition, to bring back life to people on the brink of death and
it is the main ingredient " in medicines for lunacy, convulsions, epilepsy,
etc." (p. 397). " It gives resi to the heart, nourishes the blood, increases
the breath, and strengthens the tsing " (p. 396).
These attributes of the placenta indicate that the beliefs of the Baganda
are not merely local eccentricities, but widespread and sharply defined in-
terpretations of the natural phenomena of birth.
■'Op. cit. p. 241.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 49
the general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the
question whether they do not " personify the elements of mateiial and
intellectual prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and
spirit " {op. cit. p. 209).
The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-gi\ing potency
that are attributed to the Mother-Goddess. It therefore controls the
welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (I'idc supra),
ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed
derivation from and intimate association v^th blood, it also ministered
to his mental welfare.
In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the
essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West.
I had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I
would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in substantia-
tion of the reality of that diffusion of culture.
Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links : {a)
the intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer,
and El am from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian
Dynasty ; {p) the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very
early times at least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east
as Baluchistan ; {c) at some later period the quest of gold, copper,
turquoise, and jade led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far
north as the Altai and as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley,
where their pathways were blazed with the distinctive methods of.
cultivation and irrigation; [d) at some subsequent period there was'
an easterly diffusion of culture h'om Turkestan into the Shensi Pro-
vince of China proper ; and {e) at least as early as the seventh century!
B.C. there was also a spread of Western culture to China by sea.'
I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits
in Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other
equally definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.
It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex
system of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their
features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to
people, each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some
' See " The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization," nov/ being pub-
lished in the Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society.
A
50 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
extent, the tenets of the Western beliefs v/ould become shorn of many
of their details and have many excrescences added to them before the
Chinese received them. In the crucible of the local philosophy they
would be assimilated with Chinese ideas until the resulting compound
assumed a Chinese appearance. When these inevitable circumstances
are recalled the value of any positive evidence of Western influence is
of special significance.
According to the ancient Chinese, man has two souls, the kivei
and the shen. The former, which according to de Groot is definitely
the more ancient of the two (p. 8), is the material, substantial soul,
which emanates from the teiTestrial part of the universe, and is formed
of yin substance. In living man it operates under the name o{ p'ok,
and on his death it returns to the earth and abides with the deceased
in his grave.
The shcu or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal celestial
part of the cosmos and consists of yano- substance. When operating
actively in the living human body, it is called kki or " breath," and
hivun ; when separated from it after death it lives forth as a refulgent
spirit, styled mmg}
But the shen also, in spite of its sky- affinities, hovers about the
grave and may dwell in the inscribed grave-stone (p. 6). There may
be a multitude of shen in one body and many "soul-tablets" may
be provided for them (p. 74).
Just as in Egypt the ka is said to " symbolize the force of life
which resides in nourishment " (Moret, p. 2 1 2), so the Chinese refer
to the ethereal part of the food as its khi, i.e. the " breath " of its shen.
The careful study of the mass of detailed evidence so lucidly set
forth by de Groot in his great monograph reveals the fact that, in spite
of many superficial differences and apparent contradictions, the early
Chinese conceptions of the soul and its functions are essentially iden-
tical with the Egyptian, and must have been derived from the same
source.
From the quotations which I have already given in the foregoing
pages, it appears that the Chinese entertain views regarding the func-
tions of the placenta which are identical v/ith those of the Baganda,
and a conception of the souls of man v/hich presents unmistakable
analogies with Egyptian beliefs. Yet these Chinese references do
^ De Groot, .p 5.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 51
not shed any clearer light than Egyptian literature does upon the
problem of the possible relationship between the ka and ^^f latent a.
In the Iranian domain, hov/ever, right on the overland route from
the Persian Gulf to China, there seems to be a ray of light. According
to the late Professor Moulton, " The later Parsi books tell us that
the Fravashi is a part of a good man's identity, living in heaven and
reuniting with the soul at death. It is not exactly a guardian angel,
for it shares in the development or deterioration of the rest of the man." '
In fact the Fravashi is not unlike the Egyptian ka on the one
side and the Chinese shen on the other. " They are the Maius,
' the good folk ' " (p. 144) : they are connected with the stars in their
capacity as spirits of the dead (p. 143), and they "showed their
paths to the sun, the moon, the sun, and the endless lights," just as the
kas guide the dead in the hereafter.
The Fravashis play a part in the annual All Soul's feast (p. 1 44),
for which Breasted has provided an almost exact parallel in Egypt
during the Middle Kingdom. All the circumstances of the two
ceremonies are essentially identical.
Now Professor Moulton suggests that the word Fravashi may be
derived from the Avestan root vai\ " to impregnate, " and fravasi
mean "birth-promotion" (p. 142). As he associates this with
childbirth the possibility suggests itself whether the " birth- promoter "
may not be simply the placenta.
Loret (quoted by Moret, p. 202), however, derives the word
ka from a root signifying " to beget, " so that the Fravashi may be
nothing more than the Iranian homologue of the Egyptian ka.
The connecting link between the Iranian and Egyptian conceptions
may be the Sumerian instances given to Blackman " by Dr. Langdon.
1 he whole idea seems to have originated out of the belief that
the sum of the individual attributes or vital expressions of a man's
personality could exist apart from the physical body. The contem-
plation of the phenomena of sleep and death provided the evidence in
corroboration of this.
At birth the newcomer came into the world physically connected
V\'ith the placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the
liie-giving and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related
^ Early Religious Poetry of Persia, p. 145.
" Op. cit. p. 264. ' ^ Ibid. p. 240.
52 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
to the moon and the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely
concerned in the nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk
upon which the latter was growing like some fruit on its stem ? It
was a not unnatural inference to suppose that, as the elements of the
personality were not indissolubly connected with the body, they were
brought into existence at the time of birth and that the placenta was
their vehicle.
The Egyptians* own terms of reference to the sculptor of a statue
show that the ideas of birth were uppermost in their minds when the
custom of statue-making was first devised. Moret has brought
together {pp. cit. sitpi'd) a good deal of evidence to suggest the far-
reaching significance of the conception of ritual rebirth in early
Egyptian religious ceremonial. With these ideas in his mind the
Egyptian would naturally attach great importance to the placenta in
any attempt to reconstruct the act of rebirth, which would be re-
garded in a literal sense. The placenta which played an essential
part in the original act would have an equally important role in the
ritual of rebirth. [For a further comment upon the problem discussed
in the preceding ten pages, see Appendix A, p. 73.]
The Power of the Eye.
In attempting to understand the peculiar functions attributed to
the eye it is essential that the inquirer should endeavour to look at
the problem from the early Egyptian's point of view. After mould-
ing into shape the wrappings of the mummy so as to restore as far as
possible the form of the deceased the embalmer then painted eyes
upon the face. So also when the sculptor had learned to make
finished models in stone or wood, and by the addition of paint had
enhanced the life-like appearance, the statue was still merely a dead
thing. What were needed above all to enliven it, literally and actu-
ally, in other words, to animate it, were the eyes ; and the Egyptian
artist set to work and with truly marvellous skill reproduced the ap-
pearance of living eyes (Fig. 5), How ample was the justification ror
this belief will be appreciated by anyone who glances at the remarkable
photographs recently published by Dr. Alan H. Gardiner.' The
wonderful eyes will be seen to make the statue sparkle and live.
To the concrete mind of the Egyptian this triumph ot art was regarded
' " A New Masterpiece of Egyptian Sculpture," The Jotirnal of
Egyptian Archceology , Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.
Fig. 5. — Statue ok an Egyptian Noklk of thu Pyramid Agk to show the
technical skill in the representation- of life-like eves
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 53
not as a mere technical success or aesthetic achievement. The artist
was considered to have made the statue really live ; in fact, literally
and actually converted it into a "living image". The eyes them-
selves were regarded as one of the chief sources of the vitality which
had been conferred upon the statue.
This is the explanation of all the elaborate care and skill bestowed
upon the making of artificial eyes. No doubt also it was largely
responsible for giving definition to the remarkable belief in the
animating power of the eye. But so many other factors of most
diverse kinds played a part in building up the complex theory of the
eye's fertilizing potency that all the stages in the process of rationaliza-
tion cannot yet be arranged in orderly sequence.
I refer to the question here and suggest certain aspects of it that
seem worthy of investigation merely for the purpose of stimulating
some student of early Egyptian literature to look into the matter
further.^
As death was regarded as a kind of sleep and the closing of the
eyes was the distinctive sign of the latter condition the open eyes were
not unnaturally regarded as clear evidence of wakefulness and life.
In fact, to a matter-of-fact people the restoration of the eyes to the
mummy or statue was equivalent to an awakening to life.
At a time when a reflection in a mirror or in a sheet of water
was supposed to afford quite positive evidence of the reality of each
individual's " double," and when the " soul," or more concretely,
"life," was imagined to be a minute image or homunculus, it is quite
likely that the reflection in the eye may have been interpreted as the
"soul" dwelling within it. The eye was certainly regarded as
peculiarly rich in " soul substance". It was not until Osiris received
from Horus the eye which had been wrenched out in the latter's
combat with Set that he " became a soul ".'
It is a remarkable fact that this belief in the animating power of
the eye spread as far east as Polynesia and America, and as far west
as the British Islands.
in all probability the main factor that was responsible for conferring
such definite life-giving powers upon the eye was the identification of the
moon with the Great Mother. The moon was the Eye of Re, the sky-god.
'■^ Breasted, "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 59. The
meaning of the phrase rendered "a soul " here would be more accurately
given by the word " reanimated ".
54 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Of course the obvious physiological functions of the eyes as means
of communication between their possessor and the world around him ;
the powerful influence of the eyes for expressing feeling and emotion
without speech ; the analogy between the closing and opening of the
eyes and the changes of day and night, are all hinted at in Egyptian
literature.
But there were certain specific factors that seem to have helped to
give definiteness to these general ideas of the physiology of the eyes.
The tears, like all the body moisture, came to share the life-giving
attributes of water in general. And when it is recalled that at
funeral ceremonies emotion found natural expression in the shed-
ding of tears, it is not unlikely that this came to be assimilated with
all the other water-symbolism of the funerary ritual. The early
literature of Egypt, in fact, refers to the part played by Isis and
Nephthys in the reanimation of Osiris, when the tears they shed as
mourners brought life back to the god. But the fertilizing tears of
Isis were life-giving in the wider sense. They were said to cause the
inundation which fertilized the soil of Egypt, meaning presumably that
the " Eye of Re" sent the rain.
There is the further possibility that the beliefs associated with the
cowry may have played some part, if not in originating, at any rate
in emphasizing the conception of the fertilizing powers of the eye, I
have already mentioned the outstanding features of the symbolism of
the cowry. In many places in Africa and elsewhere the similarity
of this shell to the half-closed eyelids led to its use as an artificial
"eye" in mummies. The use of the same objects to symbolize the
female reproductive organs and the eyes may have played some part
in transferring to the latter the fertility of the former. The gods
were born of the eyes of Ptah. Might not the confusion of the eye
with the genitalia have given a meaning to this statement ? There
is evidence of this double symboUsm of these shells. Cowry shells
have also been employed, both in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific,
to decorate the bows of boats, probably for the dual purpose of re-
presenting eyes and conferring vitality upon the vessel. These facts
suggest that the belief in the fertilizing power of the eyes may to
some extent be due to this cowry-association. Even if it be admitted
that all the known cases of the use of cowries as eyes of mummies are
relatively late, and that it is not known to have been employed for
such a purpose in Egypt, the mere fact that the likeness to the eyelids
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 55
so readily suggests itself may have linked together the attributes of
the cowry and the eye even in Predynastic times, when cowries were
placed with the dead in the grave.
Hathor's identification with the "Eye of Re" may possibly
have been an expression of the same idea. But the role of the " Eye
of Re " was due primarily to her association with the moon {i.'ide
infra, p. 56).
The apparently hopeless tangle of contradictions involved in these
conceptions of Hathor will have to be unravelled. For " no eye is to
be feared more than thine (Re's) when it attacketh in the form of
Hathor" (Maspero, op. cit. p. 165). If it was the beneficent life-
giving aspect of the eye which led to its identification with Hathor,
in course of time, v/hen the reason for this connexion was lost sight of,
it became associated with the malevolent, death-dealing avatar of the
goddess, and became the expression of the god's anger and hatred
toward his enemies. It is not unhkely that such a confusion may
have been responsible for giving concrete expression to the general
psychological fact that the eyes are obviously among the chief means
for expressing hatred for and intimidating and "brow-beating' ones
fellows. [In my lecture on "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall ex-
plain the explicit circumstances that gave rise to these contradictions.]
It is significant that, in addition to the -"Aadespread belief in the
" evil eye " — which in itself embodies the same confusion, the expres-
sion of admiration that works evil — in a multitude of legends it is the
eye that produces petrifaction. The " stony stare" causes death and
the dead become transformed into statues, which, however, usually
lack their original attribute of animation. These stories have Deen
collected by Mr. E. S. Hartland in his " Legend of Perseus ".
There is another possible link in the chain of associations between
the eye and the idea of fertility. 1 have already referred to the
development of the belief that incense, which plays so prominent a
part in the ritual for conferring vitality upon the dead, is itself replete
with animating properties. " Glaser has already shown the anti
incense of the Egyptian Punt Reliefs to be an Arabian word, a-a-nete,
' tree-eyes ' {Punt unci die Siidarabischen Reiche, p. 7), and to
refer to the large lumps ... as distinguished from the small round
drops, which are supposed to be tree-tears or the tree-blood.'
■Wilfred H. Schoff, "The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," 1912,
p. 164.
56 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The Moon and the Sky- World.
There are reasons for believing that the chief episodes in Aphro-
dite's past point to the Red Sea for their inspiration, though many
other factors, due partly to local circumstances and partly to contact
with other civilizations, contributed to the determination of the traits
of the Mediterranean goddess of love. In Babylonia and India there
are very definite signs of borrowing from the same source. It is im-
portant, therefore, to look for further evidence to Arabia as the obvious
bond of union both with Phoenicia and Babylonia.
The claim made in Roscher's Lexicon der Mythologie that the
Assyrian Ishtar, the Phoenician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian
Atargatis (Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta) and the Arabian
Hat (Al-ilat) were all moon-goddesses has given rise to much rather
aimless discussion, for there can be no question of their essential hom-
ology vv'ith Hathor and Aphrodite. Moreover, from the beginning,
all goddesses — and especially this most primitive stratum of fertility
deities — were for obvious reasons intimately associated with the moon.^
But the cyclical periodicity of the moon which suggested the analogy
with the similar physiological periodicity of women merely explains
the association of the moon with women. The influence of the moon
upon dew and the tides, perhaps, suggested its controlling power over
water and emphasized the life-giving function which its association
with women had already suggested. For reasons which have been
explained already, water was associated more especially with fertili-
zation by the male. Hence the symbolism of the moon came to
include the control of both the male and the female processes of re-
production.'
The literature relating to the development of these ideas with refer-
^ I am not concerned here with the explanation of the means by which
their home became transferred to the planet Venus.
" In his discussion of the functions of the Fravashis in the Iranian Yasht,
the late Professor Moulton suggested the derivation of the word from the
Avestan root var, "to impregnate," so that //vrrwJ'/ might mean "birth-
promotion ". But he was puzzled by a reference to water. " Less easy to
understand is their intimate connexion with the Waters " (" Early Religious
Poetry of Persia," pp. 142 and 143). But the Waters were regarded as
fertilizing agents. This is seen in the Avestan Anahita, who was " the
presiding genie of Fertility and more especially of the Waiters "(W. J.
Phythiati-Adams. " Mithraism," 1915, p. 13).
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 57
ence to the moon has been summarized by Professor Hutton Webster.'
He shows that " there is good reason for believing that among many
primitive peoples the moon, rather than the sun, the planets or any
of the constellations, first excited the imagination and aroused feelings
of superstitious awe or of religious veneration '.
Special attention was first devoted to the moon when agricultural
pursuits compelled men to measure time and determine the seasons.
The influence of the moon on water, both the tides and dew, brought
it within the scope of the then current biological theory of fertilization.
This conception was powerfully corroborated by the parallelism of the
moon's cycles and those of womankind, which was interpreted by re-
garding the moon as the controlling power of the female reproductive
functions. Thus all of the earliest goddesses who were personifications
of the powers of fertility came to be associated, and in some cases
identified, with the moon.
In this way the animation and deification of the moon was brought
about : and the first sky deity assumed not only all the attributes of
the cowry, i.e. the female reproductive functions, but also, as the
controller of water, many of those which afterwards were associated
with Osiris. The confusion of the male fertilizing powers of Osiris
with the female reproductive functions of Hathor and Isis may explain
how in some places the moon became a masculine deity, who, how-
ever, still retained his control over womankind, and caused the phen-
omena of menstruation by the exercise of his virile powers.^ But the
moon-god was also a measurer of time and in this aspect was specially
personified in Thoth.
The assimilation of the moon with these earth-deities was prob-
ably responsible for the creation of the first sky-deity. For once the
conception developed of identifying a deity with the moon, and the
Osirian beliefs associated with the deification of a dead king grew up,
the moon became the impersonation of the spirit of womankind, some
mortal woman who by death had acquired divinity.
After the idea had developed of regarding the moon as the spirit
1 "Rest Days," New York, 1916, pp. 124 et scq.
- Wherever these deities of fertility are found, whether in Egypt, Baby-
lonia, the Mediterranean Area, Eastern Asia, and America, illustrations of
this confusion of sex are found. The explanation which Dr. Rendel Harris
offers of this confusion in the case of Aphrodite seems to me not to give due
recognition to its great antiquity and almost world-wide distribution.
58 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
of a dead person, it was only natural that, in course of time, the sun
and stars should be brought within the scope of the same train of
thought, and be regarded as the deified dead. When this happened,
the sun not unnaturally soon leapt into a position of pre-eminence.
As the moon represented the deified female principle the sun became
the dominant male deity Re. The stars also became the spirits of the
dead.
Once this new conception of a sky-world was adumbrated a
luxuriant crop of beliefs grew up to assimilate the new beliefs with the
old, and to buttress the confused mixture of incompatible ideas with a
complex scaffolding of rationalization.
The sun-god Horus was already the son of Osiris. Osiiis con-
trolled not only the river and the irrigation canals, but also the rain-
clouds. The fumes of incense conveyed to the sky-gods the supplica-
tions of the worshippers on earth. Incense was not only " the perfume
that deifies," but also the means by which the deities and the dead
could pass to their doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. i he
sun-god Re was represented in his temple not by an anthropoid statue,
but by an obelisk,^ the gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and
" drew down " the dazzling rays of the sun, reflected from its polished
surface, so that all the worshippers could see the manifestations of the
god in his temple.
These events are important, not only for creating the sky-gods and
the sky-heaven, but possibly also for suggesting the idea that even a
mere pillar of stone, whether carved or uncarved, upon which no at-
tempt had been made to model the human form, could represent the
deity, or rather could become the " body " to be animated by the
god."^ For once it was admitted, even in the home of these ancient
ideas concerning the animation of statues, that it was not essential for
the idol to be shaped into human form, the way was opened for less
cultured peoples, who had not acquired the technical skill to carve
statues, simply to erect stone pillars or unshaped masses of stone or
^ L. Borchardt, " Das Re-heilig'cum des Kcnigs Ne-woser-re ".
For a good exposition of this matter see A. Moret, " Sancta-
aires de I'ancien Empire Egyptian, ", Ainiales du Musce Gnn/iel, 1912,
p. 265.
" It is possible that the ceremony of erecting the dad columns may have
played some part in the development of these beliefs. (On this see A.
Moret, "Mysteres Egyptians," 1913, pp. 13-17.)
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 39
wood for their gods to enter, when the appropriate ritual of animation
was performed.^
This conception of the possibility of gods, men, or animals dwelling
in stones spread in course of time throughout the world, but in eveiy
place where it is found certain arbitrary details of the methods of
animating the stone reveal the fact that all these legends must have
been derived from the same source.
The complementary belief in the possibility of the petrifaction of
men and animals has a similarly extensive geographical distribution.
The history of this remarkable incident I shall explain in the lecture
on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II.)."
The Worship of the Cow.
Intimately linked with the subjects I have been discussing is the
worship of the cow. It would lead me too far afield to enter into
the details of the process by which the earliest Mother-Goddesses
became so closely associated or even identified with the cow, and why
the cow's horns became associated with the moon among the emblems
^ Many other factors played a part in the development of the stories of
the birth of ancestors from stones. I have already referred to the origin
of the idea of the cowry (or sonn.e other shell) as the parent of mankind.
The place of the shell was often taken by roughly carved stones, which of
course were accredited with the same power of being able to produce men,
or of being a sort of egg from which human beings could be hatched. It
is unlikely that the finding of fossilized animals played any leading role in
the development of these beliefs, beyond affording corroborative evidence
in support of them after other circumstances ha:! been responsible for
originating the stories. The more circumstantial Oriental stories of the
splitting of stones giving birth to heroes and gods may have been suggested
by the finding in pebbles of fossilized shells— themselves regarded already
as the parents of mankind. But such interpretations were only possible be-
cause all the predisposing circumstances had already prepared the way for
the acceptance of these specific illustrations of a general theory.
These beliefs may have developed before and quite independently of
the ideas concerning the animation of statues ; but if so the latter e\ ent
would have strengthened and in some places become merged with the other
story.
" For an extensive collection of these remarkable petrifaction legends
in almost every part of the world, see E. Sidney Hartland's "The Legend
of Perseus," especially Volumes I and III. These distinctive stories will be
found to be complexly interwoven with all the matters discussed in this
address.
60 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
of Hathor. But it is essential that reference should be made to
certain aspects of the subject.
I do not think there is any evidence to justify the common theory
that the likeness of the crescent moon to a cow's horns was the reason
for the association. On the other hand, it is clear that both the moon
and the cow became identified with the Mother-Goddess quite inde-
pendently the one of the other, and at a very remote period.
It is probable that the fundamental factor in the development of
this association of the cow and the Mother- Goddess was the fact of the
use of milk as food for human beings. For if the cow could assume
this maternal function she was in fact a sort of foster-mother of
mankind ; and in course of time she came to be regarded as the
actual mother of the human race and to be identified with the Great
Mother.
Many other considerations helped in this process of assimilation.
The use of cattle not merely as meat for the sustenance of the living
but as the usual and most characteristic life-giving food for the dead
naturally played a part in conferring divinity upon the cow, just as an
analogous relationship made incense a holy substance and was re-
sponsible for the personification of the incense-tree as a goddess.
This influence was still further emphasized in the case of cattle
because they also supplied the blood which was used for the ritual
purpose of bestowing consciousness upon the dead, and in course of
time upon the gods also, so that they might hear and attend to the
prayers of supplicants.
Other circumstances emphasize the significance attached to the
cow : but it is difficult to decide whether they contributed in any way
to the development of these beliefs or were merely some of the
practices which were the result of the divination of the cow. The
custom of placing butter in the mouths of the dead, in Egypt,
Uganda, and India, the various ritual uses of milk, the employment
of a cow's hide as a wrapping for the dead in the grave, and
also in certain mysterious ceremonies,^ all indicate the intimate con-
nexion between the cow and the means of attaining a rebirth in the
life to come.
I think there are definite reasons for believing that once the cow
became identified with the Mother-Goddess as the parent of mankind
^ See A. Moret, op. cit. p. 81, inter alia.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 61
the first step was taken in the development of the curious system of
ideas now known as " totemism .
This, however, is a complex problem which I cannot stay to
discuss here.
When the cow became identified with the Great Mother and the
moon was regarded as the dwelling or the personification of the same
goddess, the Divine Cow by a process of confused syncretism came to
be regarded as the sky or the heavens, to which the dead were raised
up on the cow's back. When Re became the dominant deity, he
was identified with the sky, and the sun and moon were then regarded
as his eyes. Thus the moon, as the Great Mother as well as the Eye
of Re, was the bond of identification of the Great Mother with an
eye. This was probably how the eye acquired the animating powers
of the Giver of Life.
A whole volume might be written upon the almost world-wide
diffusion of these beliefs regarding the cow, as far as Scotland and
Ireland in the west, and in their easterly migration probably as far
as America, to the confusion alike of its ancient artists and its modern
ethnologists.^
As an illustration of the identification of the cow's attributes with
those of the life-giving Great Mother, I might refer to the late Pro-
fessor Moulton's commentary" on the ancient h-anian Gathas, where
cow's flesh is given to mortals by Yima to make them immortal.
" May we connect it with another legend whereby at the Regenera-
tion Mithra is to make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat
of the . . . primeval Cow from whose slain body, according to the
Aryan legends adopted by Mithraism, mankind was first created ? " "
^ See the Copan sculptured monuments described by Maudslay in
Godman and Salvia's " Biologia Centrali- Americana," Archasology,
Plate 46, representing " Stela D," with two serpents in the places oc-
cupied by the Indian elephants in Stela B — concerning which see Nature,
November 25, 1915. To one of these intertwined serpents is attached a
cow-headed human daemon. Compare also the Chiriqui figure depicted by
by MacCurdy, " A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities," Yale University Press,
1911, fig. 361, p. 209.
'^ " Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 42 and 43.
^ Op. cit. p. 43. But I think these legends accredited to the Aryans
owe their parentage to the same source as the Egyptian beliefs concerning
the cow, and especially the remarkable mysteries upon which Moret has
been endeavouring to throw some light — " Mysteies Egyptiens," p. 43.
62 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The Diffusion of Culture.
In these pages I have made no attempt to deal with the far-reach-
ing and intricate problems of the diffusion abroad of the practices and
beliefs which I have been discussing. But the thoughts and the aspira-
tions of every cultured people are permeated through and through
with their influence.
It is important to remember that in almost every stage of the de-
velopment of these complex customs and ideas not merely the " finished
product " but also the ingredients out of which it was built up were
being scattered abroad.
I shall briefly refer to certain evidence from Asia and America
in illustration of this fact and in substantiation of the reality of the
diffusion to the East of some of the beliefs I have been discussing.
The unity of Egyptian and Babylonian ideas is nowhere more
strikingly demonstrated than in the essential identity of the attributes
of Osiris and Ea. It affords the most positive proof of the derivation
of the beliefs from some common source, and reveals the fact that
Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations must have been in intimate cultural
contact at the beginning of their developmental history. " In Baby-
lonia, as in Egypt, there were differences of opinion regarding the
origin of life and the particular natural element which represented the
vital principle." " One section of the people, who were represented
by the worshippers of Ea, appear to have believed that the essence of
life was contained in water. The god of Eridu was the source of the
' v/ater of life '." ^
" Offerings of water and food were made to the dead," not
primarily so that they might be " prevented from troubling the
living,"" but to supply them with the means of sustenance and to
^ Donald A. Mackenzie, " Myths of Babylonia and Assyria," p. 44
et seq.
" Dr. Alan Gardiner has protested against the assertions of " some
Egyptologists, influenced more by anthropological theorists than by the un-
ambiguous evidence of the Egyptian texts," to the effect that " the funerary
rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main precautionary measures
serving to protect the living against the dead " (Article " Life and Death
(Egyptian)," Hastings' Encydopcedia of Religion and Ethics). I should like
to emphasize the fact that the " anthropological theorists," who so frequently
put forward these claims have little more justification for them than " some
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 63
reanimate them to help the suppliants. It is a common belief that
these and other procedures were inspired by fear of the dead. But
such a statement does not accurately represent the attitude of mind of
the people who devised these funerary ceremonies. For it is not the
enemies of the dead or those against whom he had a grudge that run
a risk at funerals, but rather his friends ; and the more deeply he was
attached to a particular person the greater the danger for the latter.
For among many people the belief obtains that when a man dies he
will endeavour to steal the " soul -substance" of those who are dearest
to him so that they may accompany him to the other world. But as
stealing the " soul-substance " ' means death, it is easy to misunderstand
such a display of affection. Hence most people who long for life and
hate death do their utmost to evade such embarrassing tokens of love ;
and most ethnologists, misjudging such actions, write about " appeasing
the dead ". It was those whom the gods loved who died young.
Ea was not only the god of the deep, but also " lord of life," kmg
of the river and god of creation. Like Osiris " he fertilized parched
and sunburnt wastes through rivers and irrigating canals, and conferred
upon man the sustaining ' food of life .... The goddess of the dead
commanded her servant to ' sprinkle the Lady Ishtar with the water
of life ' " {pp. cit. p. 44).
In Chapter III. of Mr. Mackenzie's book, from which I have just
Egyptologists ". Careful study of the best evidence from Babylonia, India,
Indonesia, and Japan, reveals the fact that anthropologists who make such
claims have in many cases misinterpreted the facts. In an article on "Ances-
tor Worship " by Professor Nobushige Hozumi in A. Stead's " Japan by the
Japanese" (1904) the true point of view is put very clearly : "The origin
of ancestor-worship is ascribed by many eminent writers to the dread of
o;Jiosts and the sacrifices made to the souls of ancestors for the purpose
of propitiating them. It appears to me more correct to attribute the origin
of ancestor-worship to a contrary cause. It was the love of ancestors, not
the dread of them " [Here he quotes the Chinese philosophers Shiu-ki
and Confucius in corroborationl that impelled men to worship. " We
celebrate the anniversary of our ancestors, pay visits to their graves, offer
flowers, food and drink, burn incense and bow before their tombs, entirely
from a feeling of love and respect for their memory, and no question or
'dread' enters our minds in doing so" (pp. 281 and 282). [See, however,
Appendix B, p. 74.]
^ For, as I have already explained, the idea so commonly and mistakenly
conveyed by the term "soul-substance" by writers on Indonesian and
Chinese beliefs would be much more accurately rendered simply by the
word " life," so that the stealing of it necessarily means death.
64 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
quoted, there is an interesting collection of quotations clearly showing
that the conception of the vitalizing properties of the body moisture of
gods is not restricted to Egypt, but is found also in Babylonia and
India, in Western Asia and Greece, and also in Western Europe.
It has been suggested that the name Ishtar has been derived from
Semitic roots implying " she vv^ho waters," " she who makes fruitful .^
Barton claims that : "The beginnings of Semitic religion as they
were conceived by the Semites themselves go back to sexual relations
. . . the Semitic conception of deity . . . embodies the truth —
grossly indeed, but nevertheless embodies it — that ' God is love
{pp. cit. p. 107). [This statement, however, is very misleading —
see Appendix C, p. 75.]
Throughout the countries where Semitic' influence spread the
primitive Mother- Goddesses or some of their specialized variants are
found. But in every case the goddess is associated with many dis-
tinctive traits which reveal her identity with her homologues in
Cyprus, Babylonia, and Egypt.
Among the Sumerians " life comes on earth through the inti'oduc-
tion of water and irrigation".^ "Man also results from a union
between the water-gods."
The Akkadians held views which were almost the direct antithesis
of these. To them " the watery deep is disorder, and the cosmos,
the order of the world, is due to the victory of a god of light and
spring over the monster of winter and water ; man is directly made
by the gods ".*
" The Sumerian account of Beginnings centres around the produc-
tion by the gods of water, Enki and his consort Nin-ella (or Dangal),
of a great number of canals bringing rain to the desolate fields of a dry
continent. Life both of vegetables and animals follows the profusion
of the vivifying waters. ... In the process of life's production besides
Enki, the personality of his consort is very conspicuous. She is called
^ Barton, op. cit. p. 105,
" The evidence set forth in these pages makes it clear that such ideas
are not restricted to the Semites : nor is there any reason to suppose that
they originated amongst them.
^ Albert J. Carney, " Iranian Views of Origins in Connexion with
Similar Babylonian Beliefs," Journal of the American Oriental Society^
Vol.^ XXXVI, 1916, pp. 300-20.
" This is Professor Carney's summary of Professor Jastrow's views as
expressed in his article " Sumerian and Akkadian Views of Beginnings ".
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 65
Nhi-Ella, ' the pure Lady,' Da)fi<^al-Nunna, the ' great Lady of
the Waters,' Xifi- 71i, ' the Lady of Birth ' " (p. 30 1 ). The child of
Enki and Nin-ella was the ancestor of mankind.^
" In later traditions, the personality of that Great Lady seems to
have been overshadowed by that of Ishtar, who absorbed several of
her functions" (p. 301).
Professor Carnoy fully demonstrates the derivation of certain early
so-called "Aryan " beliefs from Chaldea. In the Iranian account of
the creation "the great spiing Ardvi Sura Anahita is the life-increas-
ing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing who makes prosperity for
all countries (Yt. 5, 1) . . . that precious spring is worshipped as a
goddess . . . and is personified as a handsome and stately woman.
She is a fair maid, most strong, tall of form, high-girded. Her arms
are white and thick as a horse's shoulder or still thicker. She is full
of gracefulness" (Yt. 5, 7, 64, 78). " Professor Cumont thinks that
Anahita is Ishtar . . . she is a goddess of fecundation and birth.
Moreover in Achaemenian inscriptions Anahita is associated with Ahura
Mazdah and Mithra, a triad corresponding to the Chaldean triad :
Sin-Shamash-Ishtar. 'Ai/cttrt? in Strabo and other Greek writers is
treated as \S.(f)poSirr] " (p. 302).
But in Mesopotamia also the same views were entertained a5 in
Egypt of the functions of statues.
" The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on
the summits of the ' Ziggurats ' became imbued, by virtue of their
consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they repre-
sented." Thus Marduk is said to "inhabit his image" (Maspero,
(?/. cil. p. 64).
This is precisely the idea which the Egyptians had. Even at the
present day it survives among the Dravidian peoples of India." They
make images of their village deities, which may be permanent or only
temporary, but in any case they are regarded not as actual deities but
as the " bodies " so to speak into which these deities can enter. They
are sacred only when they are so animated by the goddess. The
^ Jastrow's interpretation of a recently-discovered tablet published by
Langdon under the title T/ic Siaiieriari Epic of Paradise, the Flood and
the Fall of Man.
" I have already (p. 43) mentioned the fact that it is still preserved in
China also.
66 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
ritual of animation is essentially identical with that found in Ancient
Egypt. Libations are poured out ; incense is burnt ; the bleeding
right fore-leg of a buffalo constitutes the blood -offering.' When the
deity is reanimated by these procedures and its consciousness restored
by the blood-offering it can hear appeals and speak.
The same attitude towards their idols was adopted by the Poly-
nesians. "The priest usually addressed the image, into which it was
imagined the god entered when anyone came to inquire his will." ^
But there are certain other aspects of these Indian customs that
are of peculiar interest. In my Ridgeway essay {^op. cit. supra) I
referred to the means by which in Nubia the degradation of the
oblong Egyptian 77iastaba gave rise to the simple stone circle. This
type spread to the west along the North African littoral, and also to
the Eastern desert and Palestine. At some subsequent time mariners
from the Red Sea introduced this practice into India.
[It is important to bear n mind that two other classes of stone
circles were invented. One of them was derived, not from the
mastaba itself, but from the enclosing wall surrounding it (see my
Ridgeway essay. Fig. 13, p. 531, and compare with Figs. 3 and 4,
p. 510, for illustrations of the transformed mastaba-Ky^o). This type
of circle (enclosing a dolmen) is found both in the Caucasus- Caspian
area as well as in India. A highly developed form of this encircling
type of structure is seen in the famous rails surrounding the Buddhist
ship as and dagabas. A third and later form of circle, of which
Stonehenge is an example, was developed out of the much later New
Empire Egyptian conception of a temple.]
But at the same time, as in Nubia, and possibly in Libya, the
mastaba was being degraded into the first of the three main varieties
of stone circle, other, though less drastic, forms of simplification of the
^ Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Deities of
Southern India," Madras Government Museum, Bull., Vol V, No. 3,
1907; Wilber Theodore Elmore, " Dravidian Gods in Modern Hindu-
ism : A Study of the Local and Village Deities of Southern India,"
University Studies: University of Nebraska, Vol. XV, No, 1, Jan., 1915.
Compare the sacrifice of the fore-leg of a living calf in Egypt — A. E. P. B.
Weigall, " An Ancient Egyptian Funeral Qevemony," Journal of Egyptian
Arch(SoIogv,Vo\.\\, 1915, p. 10. Early literary references from Baby-
lonia suggest that a similar method of offering blood was practised there.
" William Ellis, " Polynesian Researches," 2nd edition, 1832, Vol. I,
p. 373.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 67
niastaba were taking place, possibly in Egypt itself, but certainly
upon the neighbouring Mediterranean coasts. In some respects the
least altered copies of the niastaba are found in the so-called " giant's
graves " of Sardinia and the ** horned cairns " of the British Isles.
But the real features of the Egyptian serdab^ which was the essential
part, the nucleus so to speak, of the ?nasfaba, are best preserved in
the so-called "holed dolmens" of the Levant, the Caucasus, and
India. [They also occur sporadically in the West, as in France and
Britain.]
Such dolmens and more simplified forms are scattered in Palestine,'
but are seen to best advantage upon the Eastern Littoral of the
Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the neighbourhood of the Caspian.
They are found only in scattered localities between the Black and
Caspian Seas. As de Morgan has pointed out," their distribution is
explained by their association with ancient gold and copper mines.
They were the tombs of immigrant mining colonies who had settled
in these definite localities to exploit these minerals.
Now the same types of dolmens, also associated with ancient
mines,"^ are found in India. There is some evidence to suggest that
these degraded types of Egyptian mastabas were introduced into
India at some time after the adoption of the other, the Nubian
modification of the mastaba which is represented by the first variety
of stone circle.^
I have referred to these Indian dolmens for the specific purpose
of illustrating the complexities of the processes of diffusion of culture.
For not only have several variously specialized degradation-products
of the same original type of Egyptian niastaba reached India, possibly
by different routes and at different times, but also many of the ideas
' See H. Vincent, " Canaan d'apres rexploration recente," Paris, 1907,
p. 395.
" " Les Premieres Civilizations, " Paris, 1909, p. 404 : Memoires de la
Delegation en Perse, Tome VIII, arched. ; and Mission Scientifique au
Caucase, Tome I.
" W, J. Perry, " The Relationship between the Geographical Distri-
bution of Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," Moiioirs and Pro-
ceedings of flic Manchester Literary a^td Philosophical Socirty, Vol. 60,
PartI, 24th Nov., 1915.
^ The evidence for this is being prepared for publication by Captain
Leonard Munn, R.E., who has personally collected the data in Hydera-
bad.
68 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
that developed out of the funerary ritual in Egypt^of which the
mastaha was merely one of the manifestations — made their way to
India at various times and became secondarily blended with other
expressions of the same or associated ideas there. I have already
referred to the essential elements of the Egyptian funerary ritual — the
statues, incense, libations, and the rest — as still persisting among the
Dra vidian peoples.
But in the Madras Presidency dolmens are found converted into
Siva temples.^ Now in the inner chamber of the shrine — which
represents the homologue of the serdab — in place of the statue or
bas-relief of the deceased or of the deity, which is found in some of
them (see Plate I), there is the stone linga-yoni emblem in the posi-
tion corresponding to that in which, in the later temple in the same
locality (Kambaduru), there is an image of Pai^vati, the consort of
Siva.
The earliest deities in Egypt, both Osiris and Hathor, were
really expressions of the creative principle. In the case of Hathor,
the goddess was, in fact, the personification of the female organs of
reproduction." In these early Siva temples in India these principles of
creation were given their literal interpretation, and represented frankly
as the organs of reproduction of the two sexes. The gods of creation
were symbolized by models in stone of the creating organs. Further
illustrations of the same principle are witnessed in the Indonesian
megalithic monuments which Perry calls " dissoliths "."
The later Indian temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, were
developed from these early dolmens, as Mr. Longhurst's reports so
clearly demonstrate. But from time to time there was an influx of
new ideas from the West which found expression in a series of modi-
fications of the architecture. Thus India provides an admirable
illustration of this principle of culture contact. A series of waves
of megalithic culture introduced purely Western ideas. These were
developed by the local people in their own way, constantly inter-
mingling a variety of cultural influences to weave them into a dis-
^ Annual Report of the Archaeological Department, Southern Circle,
Madras, for the year 1915-1916. See for example Mr. A. H. Longhurst's
photographs and plans (Plates 1-IV) and especially that of the old Siva
temple at Kambaduru, Plate IV {b).
" As I shall show in " The Birth of Aphrodite " (Chapter III).
^W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 69
tinctive fabric, which was compounded partly of imported, partly of
local threads, woven locally into a truly Indian pattern. In this pro-
cess of development one can detect the effects of Mycenean accretions
(see for example Longhurst's Plate Xlll), probably modified during
its indirect transmission by Phoenician and later influences ; and also
the more intimate part played by Babylonian, Egyptian, and, later,
Greek and Persian art and architecture in directing the course of
development of Indian culture.
Incidentally, in the course of the discussions in the foregoing pages,
i have referred to the profound influence of Egyptian, Babylonian and
Indian ideas in Eastern Asia. Perry's important book {pp. cit. supra)
reveals their efforts in Indonesia. Thence they spread across the
Pacific to America.
In the " Migrations of Early Culture " (p. I 14) I called attention
to the fact that among the Aztecs water was poured upon the head
of the mummy. This ritual procedure was inspired by the Egyptian
idea of libations, for, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, the pour-
ing out of the water was accompanied by the remark " C est cette eau
que tu as re^ue en venant au monde '.
But incense-burning and blood-offering were also practised in
America. In an interesting memoir ^ on the practice of blood-letting
by piercing the ears and tongue, Mrs. Zelia Nuttall reproduces a re-
markable picture from a " partly unpublished MS. of Sahagun's work
preserved in Florence ". " The image of the sun is held up by a
man whose body is partly hidden, and two men, seated opposite to
each other in the foreground, are in the act of piercing the helices or
external borders of their ears." But in addition to these blood-offer-
ings to the sun, two priests are burning incense in remarkably Egyptian-
like censers, and another pair are blowing conch-shell trumpets.
But it was not merely the use of incense and libations and the
identities in the wholly arbitrary attributes of the American pantheon
that reveal the sources of their derivation in the Old World. When
the Spaniards first visited Yucatan they found traces of a Maya bap-
tismal rite which the natives called ziki/, signifying " to be born again ".
At the ceremony also incense was burnt.'
^ " A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans," Archaeological and
Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. I,
No. 7. 1904.
- Bancroft, op. cit. Vol. 11, pp. 682 and 683.
70 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The forehead, the face, the fingers and toes were moistened.
" After they had been thus sprinkled with water, the priest arose and
removed the cloths from the heads of the children, and then cut off
with a stone knife a certain bead that was attached to the head from
childhood." ^
[The custom of wearing such a bead during childhood is found in
Egypt at the present day.]
In the case of the girls, their mothers " divested them of a cord
which was worn during their childhood, fastened round the loins,
having a small shell that hung in front (* una conchuela asida que les
venia a dar encima de la parte honesta ' — Landa). The removal of
this signified that they could marry." "^
This use of shells is found in the Soudan and East Africa at the
present day."* The girdle upon which the shells were hung is the
prototype of the cestus of Hathor, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Kali and all
the goddesses of fertility in the Old World. It is an admirable
illustration of the fact that not only were the finished products, the
goddesses and their fantastic repertory of attributes, transmitted to the
New World, but also the earliest and most primitive ingredients out
of which the complexities of their traits were compounded.
In Chapter III ("The Birth of Aphrodite") I shall explain what
an important part the invention of this girdle played in the develop-
ment of the material side of civilization and the even vaster influence
it exerted upon beliefs and ethics. It represents the first stage in the
evolution of clothing ; and it was responsible for originating the belief
in love-philtres and in the possibility of foretelling the future.
It would lead me too far from my main purpose in this book to
discuss the widespread geographical distribution and historical associa-
tions of the customs of baptism and pouring libations among different
peoples. I may, however, refer the reader to an article by Mr.
Elsdon Best, entitled " Ceremonial Performances Pertaining to Birth,
as Performed by the Maori of New Zealand in Past Times" {Journal
of the Royal Anthropological histitute, Vol. XLIV, 1914, p. 127),
which sheds a clear light upon the general problem.
The whole subject of baptismal ceremonies is well worth detailed
study as a remarkable demonstration of the spread of culture in early
times.
' Op. cit. p. 684. - Ibid. " See J. Wilfrid Jackson, op. cit. supra.
Fig. 6.— Rei'kesentation ok the ancient Mexican wokshii' of the Sin
I'he image of the sun is held up by a man in front of his face ; two men blow conch-shell
trumpets; another pair burn incense; and a third pair make blood-offerings by piercing
their ears — after Zelia Nuttall.
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 71
Summary.
In these pages I have ranged over a very wide field of speculation,
groping in the dim shadows of the early history of civilization. I have
been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately be-
came woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to
suggest that the practice of mummification was the woof around which
the web of civilization was intimately intertwined.
I have already explained how closely that practice was related to
the oiigin and development of architecture, which Professor Lethaby
has called the " matrix of ciNilization," and how nearly the ideas that
grew up in explanation and in justification of the ritual of embalming
were affected by the practice of agriculture, the second great pillar of
support for the edifice of civilization. It has also been shown how
far-reaching was the influence exerted by ihe needs of the embalmer,
which impelled men, probably for the first time in history, to plan and
carry out great expeditions by sea and land to obtain the necessary
resins and the balsams, the wood and the spices. Incidentally also
in course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a pro-
found effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of
medicine and all the sciences ancillary to it.
But I have devoted chief attention to the bearing of the ideas
which developed out of the practice and ritual of embalming upon
the spirit of man. It gave shape and substance to the belief in a
future life ; it was perhaps the most important factor in the develop-
ment of a definite conception of the gods : it laid the foundation of
the ideas which subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul :
in fact, it was intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals
and aspirations which are nov/ included in the conception of religious
belief and ritual. A multitude of other trains of thought were started
amidst the intellectual ferment of the formulation of the earliest con-
crete system of biological theory. The idea of the properties and
functions of water which had previously sprung up in connexion with
the development of agriculture became crystallized into a more definite
form as the result of the development of mummification, and this has
played an obtrusive part in religion, in philosophy and in medicine
ever since. Moreover its influence has become embalmed for all time
in many languages and in the ritual of every religion.
72 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
But it was a factor in the development not merely of religious be-
liefs, temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the
origin of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular
beliefs. The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons,
totemism and the sky-world are all of them conceptions that were
more or less closely connected with the matters I have been dis-
cussing.
The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of
mummification were responsible for the development of the temple
and its ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities.
But they were also responsible for originating a priesthood. For the
resuscitation of the dead king, Osiris, and for the maintenance of his
existence it was necessary for his successor, the reigning king, to per-
form the ritual of animation and the provision of food and drink.
The king, therefore, was the first priest, and his functions were not
primarily acts of worship but merely the necessary preliminaries for
restoring life and consciousness to the dead seer so that he could con-
sult him and secure his advice and help.
It was only when the number of temples became so great and
their ritual so complex and elaborate as to make it a physical impossi-
bihty for the king to act in this capacity in all of them and on every
occasion that he was compelled to delegate some of his priestly func-
tions to others, either members of the royal family or high officials.
In course of time certain individuals devoted themselves exclusively to
these duties and became professional priests ; but it is important to
remember that at first it was the exclusive privilege of Horus, the
reigning king, to intercede with Osiris, the dead king, on behalf of
men, and that the earliest priesthood consisted of those individuals to
whom he had delegated some of these duties.
In conclusion I should like to express in words what must be only
too apparent to every reader of this statement. It claims to be noth-
ing more than a contribution to the study of some of the most difficult
problems in the history of human thought. For one so ill-equipped
for a task of such a nature as I am to attempt it calls for a word of
explanation. The clear light that recent research has shed upon the
earliest literature in the world has done much to destroy the founda-
tions upon which the theories propounded by scholars have been built
up. It seemed to be worth while to attempt to read afresh the volu-
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 73
minous mass of old documents with the illumination of this new in-
formation.
The other reason for making such an attempt is that almost every
modern scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed
that the fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human
beliefs and practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his
theories. At best it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am
convinced it is utterly false. Holding such views 1 have attempted to
read the evidence afresh.
APPENDIX A.
On re-reading the discussion of the significance of the ka \ realize that,
In striving after brevity and conciseness — to keep the size of my statement
NN-ithin the limits of the Bul/elin of the John Ry lands Library, generously
elastic though it is — I have left the argument in a rather nebulous form.
it must not be imagined that a concrete-minded people like the ancient
Egyptians entertained highly abstract and ethereal ideas about " the soul ".
They recognized that all the expressions of consciousness and personality
could cease during sleep ; and at the same time the phenomena of dreams
seemed to afford evidence that these absent elements of the individual's
being were enjoying real experiences elsewhere. Thus there was an alter
ego, identified by this matter-of-fact people with the twin (placenta) which
was born with the child and was clearly concerned with its physical and
intellectual nourishment — for it was obviously connected by its stalk to the
embryo like a tree to its roots, and it seemed to be composed of blood,
which was regarded as the vehicle of mind. But this intellectual " twin "
kept pace in its growth with the physical body. When a statue was made
to represent the latter the ka could dwell in the real body or the statue.
The identification of the placenta with the moon helped the growth
of the conception that this " birth-promoter * could not only bring about a
re-birth in the life to come, but also facilitate a transference to the sky-
world. The placenta had already been superintending the deceased's
welfare upon earth and would continue to do so when he rejoined his ka
in the sky world.
The complexity of the conception is due to the fact that the simple
early belief in " a double " was gradually elaborated, as one new idea
after another became added to it, and rationalized to blend with the former
complex in an increasingly involved synthesis. It was only when the
74 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
elaborate scaffolding of material factors was cleared away that a more
ethereal conception of " the soul " was sublimated.
APPENDIX B.
I should like to emphasize the fact that my protest (on p. 63) was
directed against the claim that the custom of offering food and drink to the
dead was inspired primarily to prevent them from troubling the living.
Its original purpose was to sustain and reanimate the dead ; but, of course,
when its real meaning was forgotten, it was explained in a great variety of
ways by the people who made a practice of presenting offerings to the dead
without really knowing why they did so.
Dr. Alan Gardiner himself has made a statement which casual readers
(i.e., those who do not discriminate between the motive for the invention of
a procedure and the reasons subsequently given for its continuance) might
regard as a contradiction of my quotation from his writings on p. 62.
Thus he says: "Any god could doubtless attack human beings, but savage
and malicious deities, like Seth [Set], the murderer of Osiris, or Sakhmet,
[Sekhet], the ' lady of pestilence' {jib-t 'idui), were doubtless most to be
feared." [This attitude of the malignant goddesses is revealed in a most
obtrusive form in the village deities of the Dravidians of Southern India.]
" The dead were specially to be feared ; nor was it only those dead who
were unhappy or unburied that might torment the living, for the magician
sometimes warns them that their tombs are endangered" (Article " Magic
(Egyptian)," Hastings' Encycl. Ethics and Religion, p. 264).
But it is important to bear in mind, as the same scholar has explciined else-
where [" Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings Encycl., p. 23] : " Noth-
ing could be farther from the truth [than the statement that ' the funerary
rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main precautionary
measures serving to protect the living against the dead '] ; it is of funda-
mental importance to realize that the vast stores of wealth and thought ex-
pended by the Egyptians on their tombs — that wealth and that thought
which created not only the pyramids, but also the practice of mummification
and a very extensive funerary literature — -were due to the anxiety of each
member of the community with regard to his own individual future welfare,
and not to feelings of respect, or fear, or duty felt towards the other dead."
It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living
observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to in-
sure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary and
real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the gods
INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 75
must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is widespread through-
out the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and that in many places
food-offerings are made for the specific purpose " of appeasing the fairies ' .
Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are
made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in their
pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went to
Fairyland.
Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world :
but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are secondary
rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different signific-
ance.
APPENDIX C.
Prof. Barton's statement {supra, p. 64) is typical of a widespread mis-
apprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations and
the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that the mani-
festations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with reproduction.
They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to children ; and the
organ concerned in this process was regarded as the giver of life, the
creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the conception of the first
deity. But it was only secondarily that these life-giving attributes were
brought into association vrith the sexual act and the masculine powers
of fertilization. Much confusion has been created by those writers who
see manifestations of the sexual factor and phallic ideas in evei7 aspect
of primitive religion, where in most cases only the power of life-giving
plays a part.
Chapter II.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS.^
AN adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend
would represent the history of the expression of mankind's
aspirations and fears during the past fifty centuries and more.
For the dragon was evolved along with civilization itself. The search
for the elixir of life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the
boon of immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled
men to build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization.
The dragon-legend is the history of that search which has been pre-
served by popular tradition : it has grown up and kept pace with the
constant struggle to grasp the unattainable goal of men's desires ; and
the story has been constantly growing in complexity, as new incidents
were drawn within its scope and confused with old incidents whose
real meaning was forgotten or distorted. It has passed through all the
phases with which the study of the spreading of rumours or the develop-
ment of dreams has familiarized students of psychology. The simple
original stories, which become blended and confused, theii* meaning dis-
torted and reinterpreted by the rationalizing of incoherent incidents, are
given the dramatic form with which the human mind invests all stories
that make a strong appeal to its emotions, and then secondarily elaborated
with a wealth of circumstantial detail. This is the history of popular
legends and the development of rumours. But these phenomena are
displayed in their most emphatic form in dreams.' In his waking
state man restrains his roving fancies and exercises what Freud has
called a "censorship ' over the stream of his thoughts : but when he
falls asleep, the *' censor" dozes also ; and free rein is given to his un-
^ An elaboration of a Lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library
on 8 November, 1916.
' In his lecture, " Dreams and Primitive Culture," delivered at the
John Rylands Library on 10 April, 1918, Dr. Rivers has expounded the
principles of dream-development.
76
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 77
restrained fancies to make a hotch-potch of the most varied and unre-
lated incidents, and to create a fantastic mosaic buih up from fragments
of his actual experience, bound together by the cement of his aspirations
and fears. The myth resembles the dream because it has developed
without any consistent and effective censorship. The individual who
tells one particular phase of the story may exert the controlling influence
of his mind over the version he narrates : but as it is handed on from
man to man and generation to generation the " censorship " also is con-
stantly changing. This lack of unity of control implies that the de-
velopment of the myth is not unlike the building-up of a dream-stoiy.
But the dragon-myth is vastly more complex than any dream, because
mankind as a whole has taken a hand in the process of shaping it ; and
the number of centuries devoted to this work of elaboration has been
far greater than the years spent by the average individual in accumulat-
ing the stuff of which most of his dreams have been made. But though
the myth is enormously complex, so vast a mass of detailed evidence
concerning every phase and every detail of its histoiy has been preserved,
both in the literature and the folk-lore of the world, that we are able
to submit it to psychological analysis and determine the course of its
development and the significance of every incident in its tortuous
rambling.
In instituting these comparisons between the development of myths
and dreams, I should like to emphasize the fact that the interpretation
of the uiytk proposed in these pages is almost diametrically opposed
to that suggested by Freud, and pushed to a reductio ad abstirduvi
by his more reckless followers, and especially by Yung.
The dragon has been described as " the most venerable symbol
employed in ornamental art and the favourite and most highly decora-
tive motif in artistic design ". It has been the inspiration of much, if
not most, of the world's great literature in every age and clime, and
the nucleus around which a wealth of ethical symbolism has accumu-
lated throughout the ages. The dragon-myth represents also the
earliest doctrine or systematic theory of astronomy and meteorology.
In the course of its romantic and chequered history the dragon has
been identified v\nth all of the gods and all of the demons of every
religion. But it is most intimately associated with the earliest stratum
of divinities, for it has been homologized with each of the members of
the earliest Trinity, the Great Mother, the Water God, and the
78 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Warrior Sun God, both individually and collectively. To add to the
complexities of the story, the dragon-slayer is also represented by the
same deities, either individually or collectively ; and the weapon wdth
which the hero slays the dragon is also homologous both with him and
his victim, for it is animated by him who wields it, and its powers of
destruction make it a symbol of the same power of evil which it itself
destroys.
Such a fantastic paradox of contradictions has supplied the materials
with which the fancies of men of every race and land, and every stage
of knowledge and ignorance, have been playing for all these centuries.
It is not surprising, therefore, that an endless series of variations of the
story has been evolved, each decked out with topical allusions and
distinctive embellishments. But throughout the complex tissue of this
highly embroidered fabric the essential threads of the web and woof
of its foundation can be detected with surprising constancy and regu-
larity.
Within the limits of such an account as this it is obvious that I can
deal only with the main threads of the argument and leave the interest-
ing details of the local embellishments until some other time.
The fundamental element in the dragon's powers is the control
of water. Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was
regarded as animated by the dragon, who thus assumed the role of
Osiris or his enemy Set. But when the attributes of the Water God
became confused with those of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar,
the lioness (Sekhet) form of Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the
destructive Tiamat, became the symbol of disorder and chaos, the
dragon became identified with her also.
Similarly the third member of the Earliest Trinity also became the
dragon. As the son and successor of the dead king Osiris the living
king Horus became assimilated with him. When the belief became
more and more insistent that the dead king had acquired the boon of
immortality and was really alive, the distinction between him and
the actually living king Horus became correspondingly minimized.
This process of assimilation was advanced a further stage when the
king became a god and was thus more closely identified with his father
and predecessor. Hence Horus assumed many of the functions of
Osiris ; and amongst them those which in foreign lands contributed to
making a dragon of the Water God. But if the distinction be-
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS
79
tween Horus and Osiris became more and more attenuated with the
lapse of time, the identification with his mother Hathor (Isis) was more
complete still. For he took her place and assumed many of her attri-
butes in the later versions of the great saga which is the nucleus of all
the literature of mythology — ^1 refer to the story of "The Destruction
of Mankind ".
The attributes of these three members of the Trinity, Hathor,
Osiris, and Horus, thus became intimately linked the one with the
other ; and in Susa, where the earliest pictorial representation of a
real dragon developed, it received concrete form (Fig. 1) as a mon-
ster compounded of the lioness of Hathor (Sekhet) with the falcon (or
eagle) of Horus, but with the human attributes and water- control ling
powers which originally belonged to Osiris. In some parts of Ahica
"Fig. I. — Early Representation of a
"Dragon" Compounded of the
Forepart of an Eagle and the
HiNDPART OF A LiON — (froiTi an
Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after
Jequier).
Fig. 2. — The Earliest Babylonian Con-
ception OF THE Dragon Tiamat —
(from a Cylinder-seal in the British
Museum, after L. W. King).
the earliest "dragon" was nothing more than Hathor's cow or the
gazelle or antelope of Horus (Osiris) or of Set.
But if the dragon was compounded of all three deities, who was
the slayer of the evil dragon ?
The story of the dragon-conflict is really a recital of Horus's
vendetta against Set, intimately blended and confused with different
versions of " The Destruction of Mankind ".^ The commonplace
incidents of the originally prosaic stories were distorted into an almost
unrecognizable form, then secondarily elaboiated without any attention
to their original meaning, but with a wealth of circumstantial embellish-
ment, in accordance with the usual methods of the human mind that
I have already mentioned. The history of the legend is in fact the
most complete, because it is the oldest and the most widespread, illus-
tration of those instinctive tendencies of the human spirit to bridge the
^ Vide infra, p. \{f) et seq.
80 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
gaps in its disjointed experience, and to link together in a kind of
mental mosaic the otherwise isolated incidents in the (acts of daily life
and the rumours and traditions that have been handed down h'om the
story-teller's predecessors.
In the " Destruction of Mankind," which I shall discuss more fully
in the following pages (p. 109 et seq?), Hathor does the slaying : in
the later stories Horus takes his mother's place and earns his spurs as the
Warrior Sun-god : ^ hence confusion was inevitably introduced between
the enemies of Re, the original victims in the legend, and Horus's
traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Against the latter it was
Osiris himself who fought originally ; and in many of the non- Egyptian
variants of the legend it is the rain-god himself who is the warrior.
Hence all three members of the Trinity were identified, not only
with the dragon, but also with the hero who was the dragon-
slayer.
But the weapon used by the latter was also animated by the same
Trinity, and in fact identified wath them. In the Saga of the Winged
Disk, Horus assumed the form of the sun equipped with the wangs of
his own falcon and the fire- spitting uraeus serpents. Flying down from
heaven in this form he was at the same time the god and the god's
weapon. As a fiery bolt from heaven he slew the enemies of Re, who
were now identified with his own personal foes, the followers of Set.
But in the earlier versions of the myth (i.e. the " Destruction of Man-
kind "), it was Hathor who was the " Eye of Re " and descended
from heaven to destroy mankind with fire ; she also was the vulture
(Mut) ; and in the earliest version she did the slaughter with a knife
or an axe with which she was animistically identified.
But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of
the flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms
from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquishing the
demon, when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of
which was due to the indwelling spirit of the god) was the chosen
means of overcoming the dragon.
This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon- story. The early
Trinity as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the
^ Hence soldiers killed in battle and women dying in childbirth receive
special consideration in the exclusive heaven of (Osiris's) Horus's Indian and
American representatives, Indra and Tlaloc.
Fjg. y. — .A Medi.i;val Picturk of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud
(After the late Professor \V. Anderson)
\
Fig. 8. — A Chinese Dragon
(After de Groot)
Fig. g. — Dragon fkom the Ishtar Gate of Babylon
.ii:^
Fig. id. — Babylonian Weather God
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 81
dragon, which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibili-
ties for dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident
and ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of
story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh
of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of as-
tronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily life,
the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and wrong,
justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and poverty.
The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn into the
legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and the main
theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in every age.
An ancient Chinese philosopher, Wang Fu, writing in the time of
the Han Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon.
" His horns resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes
those of a demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his
scales those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a
tiger, his ears those of a cow." ' But this list includes only a small
minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time or
another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding hotch-
potch.
This composite wonder- beast ranges from Western Europe to the
Far East of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to
America. Although in the different localities a great number of most
varied ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the
dragon occurs the substratiim of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a
crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet
and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk,
and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An association
of anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only
mean that all dragons are the progeny of the same ultimate ancestors.
But it is not merely a case of structural or anatomical similarity,
but also of physiological identity, that clinches the proof of the deriva-
tion of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the
dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls
the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the tops
^ M. W. de Visser, " The Dragon in China and Japan," Verhandelin-
gcn der Koninklijke Akadeinie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdavi,
Af dealing Letterkunde, Deel Xlll, No. 2, 1913, p. 70.
6
82 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the rainfall,
and is associated with thunder and Ughtning. Its home is a mansion
at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures, usually pearls,
but also gold and precious stones. In other instances the dwelling is
upon the top of a high mountain ; and the dragon's breath fonns
the rain-clouds. It emits thunder and lightning. Eating the dragon's
heart enables the diner to acquire the knowledge stored in this " organ
of the mind " so that he can understand the language of birds, and
in fact of all the creatures that have contributed to the making of a
dragon.
It should not be necessary to rebut the numerous attempts that
have been made to explain the dragon-myth as a story relating to ex-
tinct monsters. Such fantastic claims can be made only by writers
devoid of any knowledge of palaeontology or of the distinctive features
of the dragon and its history. But when the Keeper of the Egyptian
and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, in a book that is not
intended to be humorous,^ seriously claims Dr. Andrews' discovery of
a gigantic fossil snake as " proof " of the former existence of " the
great serpent-devil Apep," it is time to protest.
Those who attempt to derive the dragon from such living creatures
as lizards like Draco volans or Moloch horridus " ignore the evidence
of the composite and unnatural features of the monsters.
" Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths,
when they first became articulate for us, show him to be in all essen-
tials the same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil,
guardian of hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men ;
and the slaying of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes — of
Siegmund, of Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristam — even of
Lancelot, the beau ideal of mediaeval chivalry " {Jincyclopcedia
Britanmca, vol. viii., p. 467). But if in the West the dragon is
usually a "power of evil," in the far East he is equally emphatically
a symbol of beneficence. He is identified with emperors and kings ;
he is the son of heaven, the bestower of all bounties, not merely to
mankind directly, but also to the earth as well.
Even in our country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent,
' E. A. Wallis Budge, " The Gods of the Egyptians," 1904, vol. i.,
p. n.
-Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 83
otherwise- — if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the
development of heraldic ornament — dragons would hardly figure as
the supporters of the anns of the City of London, and as the symbol
of many of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House
of Tudor is included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon
of Cadwallader was added as an additional badge to the achievement
of the Prince of Wales. But, " though a common ensign in war, both
in the East and the West, as an ecclesiastical emblem his opposite quali-
ties have remained consistently until the present day. V/henever the
dragon is represented, it symbolizes the power of evil, the devil and his
works. Hell in mediaeval art is a dragon with gaping jaws, belching
fire."
And in the East the dragon's reputation is not always blameless.
For it figures in some disreputable incidents and does not escape the
sort of punishment that tradition metes out to his European cousins.
The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.
In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even
for two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient
civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America
and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear,
especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the
Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.
The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and
Aztec codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was
provided with the head of the Indian elephant ^ (i.e. seems to have been
confused with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attiibutes more sug-
gestive of the Dravidian Naga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In
other words the character of the American god, known as Chac by
the Maya people and as Tlaloc by the Aztecs, is an interesting il-
lustration of the effects of such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has
studied in Melanesia." Not only does the elephant-headed god in
America represent a blend of the two great Indian rain- gods which in
the Old World are mortal enemies, the one of the other (partly for
^ " Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in America," Nature,
Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and Jan. 27, 1916, p. 593.
""History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.
84 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
the political reason that the Dravidians and Aryans were rival and
hostile peoples), but all the ti'aits of each deity, even those depicting
the old Aryan conception of their deadly combat, are reproduced in
America under circumstances which reveal an ignorance on the part
of the artists of the significance of the paradoxical contradictions they
are representing. But even many incidents in the early history of the
Vedic gods, which were due to arbitrary circumstances in the growth
of the legends, reappear in America. To cite one instance (out of
scores which might be quoted), in the Vedic story Indra assumed many
of the attributes of the god Soma. In America the name of the god of
rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is TIa/oc, which is generally
translated "pulque of the earth," \xom ilal\/\i, "earth," and oc\tli\,
"pulque, a fermented drink (like the Indian drink soma) made from
the juice of the agave ".^
The so-called "long-nosed god "(the elephant-headed rain-god)
has been given the non-committal designation " god B," by Schellhas."
I reproduce here a remarkable drawing (Fig. 1 1 ) from the Codex
Troano, in which this god, whom the Maya people called Chac, is
shown pouring the rain out of a water- jar (just as the deities of Baby-
lonia and India are often represented), and putting his foot upon the
head of a serpent, who is preventing the rain from reaching the earth.
Here we find depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the
Vedic conception of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell
describes this scene as " the elephant-headed god B standing upon the
head of a serpent " ; ' while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise,
explains it as the serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.^ In the
^ H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archeologie Americaine," 1912, p. 319.
'" *' Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," Papers of the
Peahody. Aliiseion, vol. iv., 1904.
^ Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.
* *' Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften,"
Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, Bd. 42, 1910, pp. 75 and 77. In the remark-
able series of drawings from Maya and Aztec sources reproduced by
Seler in his articles in the Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, the Peahody
Mitsei4ui Papers, and his monograph on the Codex Vaticamis, not only is
practically every episode of the dragon-myth of the Old World graphically
depicted, but also every phase and incident of the legends from India (and
Babylonia, Egypt and the ;^gean) that contributed to the building-up of
the myth.
I'U;. II. — RliPKODLCTION Ol' A PiCTUKE IN THE MaVA CoDEX TkOANO REPRESENTING
THE KaIN-GOD ChAC TREADING UPON THE SeRPENt's HEAD, WHICH IS INTER-
POSED BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE RAIN THE GOD IS POURING OUT OF A
BOWL. A RaIN-GODDESS stands UPON THE SeRPENT's TAIL.
Fig. 12. — Another representation of the Elephant-headed Rain god. He is
HOLDING thunderbolts, CONVENTIONALISED IN A HAND-LIKE FORM. ThE SeRPENT
IS CONVERTED INTO A SAC, HOLDING UP THE RAIN-WATERS.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 85
Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is
truer to the Indian conception of Vritra, as " the restrainer " ' (Fig. 12).
The serpent (the American rattlesnake) restrains the water by coil-
ing itself into a sac to hold up the rain and so prevent it from reaching
the earth. In the various American codices this episode is depicted in
as great a variety of forms as the Vedic poets of India described when
they sang of the exploits of Indra. The Maya Chac is, in fact, Indra
transferred to the other side of the Pacific and there only thinly dis-
guised by a veneer of American stylistic design.
But the Aztec god Tlaloc is merely the Chac of the Maya people
transferred to Mexico. Schellhas declares that the "god B," the
" most common figure in the codices," is a "universal deity to whom
the most varied elements, natural phenomena, and activities are subject "•
" Many authorities consider God B to represent Kukulkan, the
Feathered Serpent, whose Aztec equivalent is Quetzalcoatl. Others
identify him with Itzamna, the Serpent God of the East, or with Chac,
the Rain God of the four quarters and the equivalent of Tlaloc of the
Mexicans." '
From the point of view of its Indian analogies these confusions are
peculiarly significant, for the same phenomena are found in India. The
snake and the dragon can be either the rain-god of the East or the
enemy of the rain-god ; either the dragon-slayer or the evil dragon
who has to be slain. The Indian word Ndga, which is applied to
the beneficent god or king identified with the cobra, can also mean
"elephant," and this double significance probably played a part in
the confusion of the deities in America.
In the Dresden Codex the elephant-headed god is represented in
one place grasping a serpent, in another issuing h'om a serpent's mouth,
and again as an actual serpent (Fig. 1 3). Turning next to the attri-
butes of these American gods we find that they reproduce with amazing
precision those of Indra. Not only were they the divinities who con-
trolled rain, thunder, lightning, and vegetation, but they also carried
axes and thunderbolts (Fig. 1 3) like their homologues in the Old World.
Like Indra, Tlaloc was intimately associated with the East and with
the tops of mountains, where he had a special heaven, reserved for
' Compare Hopkins, " Religions of India," p. 94.
■ Herbert J. Spinden, " Maya Art," p. 62.
86 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
waniors who fell in battle and women who died in childbirth. As a
water-god also he presided over the souls of the drowned and those
who in life suffered from dropsical affections. Indra also specialized in
the same branch of medicine.
In fact, if one compares the account of Tlaloc's attiibutes and
achievements, such as is given in Mr. Joyce's " Mexican Archeology"
or Professor Seler's monograph on the "Codex Vaticanus," with Pro-
fessor Hopkins's summary of Indra's character (" Religions of India ")
the identity is so exact, even in the most arbitrary traits and confusions
with other deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any serious
investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely Ameri-
can forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the representation
of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted snakes ^ finds
its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times this curious device
was still being used by artists."^
" As the god of fertility maize belonged to him [Tlaloc], though
not altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after
it had been discovered by other gods concealed in the heart of a
mountain. " ^ Indra also obtained soma from the mountain by similar
means.*
In the ancient civilization of America one of the most prominent
deities was called the " Feathered Serpent," in the Maya language,
Kukulkan, Quiche Gukumatz, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Pueblo
' ' Mother of Waters ". Throughout a very extensive part of America
the snake, Uke the Indian Naga, is the emblem of rain, clouds, thunder
and lightning. But it is essentially and pre-eminently the symbol of
rain ; and the god who controls the rain, Chac of the Mayas, Tlaloc
of the Aztecs, carried the axe and the thunderbolt like his homologues
and prototypes in the Old World. In America also we find repro-
duced in full, not only the legends of the antagonism between the
^ Seler, " Codex Vaticanus," Figs. 299-304.
■' See, for example, F. W. K. Miiller, " Nang," Int. Arch.f. Ethnolog.,
1894, Suppl. zu Bd. vii., Taf. vii., where the mask of Ravana (a late sur-
rogate of Indra in the Ramayand) reveals a survival of the prototype of
the Mexican designs.
"Joyce, op. cit., p. 37.
"^ For the incident of the stealing of the soma by Garuda, who in this
legend is the representative of Indra, see Hopkins, "Religions of India,"
pp. 360-61.
Fia. 13.
A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya
Codex.
Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-
headed god Chac with a snake's body He is pouring out rain. The
central picture represents the hghtning animal carrying fire down from
heaven to earth. On the right Chac is shown in human guise carrying
thunderweapons in the form of burning torches.
in the second row a goddess sits m the rain : her head is prolonged
into that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows
Chac in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The
third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and
serpent.
In the third row Chac is seen with his axe : in the central picture he is
standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud ; and on the right
he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours.
Fig. 13. — A paok (the 36TH) of the Dresden .Mava Codex
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 87
thunder-bird and the serpent, but also the identification of these two
rivals in one composite monster, which, as I have aheady mentioned,
is seen in the winged disks, both in the Old World and the New.'
Hardly any incident in the histoiy of the Egyptian falcon or the
thunder-birds of Babylonia, Greece or India, fails to reappear in
America and find pictorial expression in the Maya and Aztec
codices.
What makes America such a rich storehouse of historical data is
the fact that it is stretched across the world almost from pole to pole ;
and for many centuries the jetsam and flotsam swept on to this vast
strand has made it a museum of the cultural history of the Old World,
much of which would have been lost for ever if America had not
saved it. But a record presei'ved in this manner is necessarily in a
highly confused state. For essentially the same materials reached
America in manifold fornis. The original immigrants into America
brought from North- Eastern Asia such cultural equipment as had
reached the area east of the Yenesei at the time when Europe was in
the Neolithic phase of culture. Then when ancient mariners began to
coast along the Eastern Asiatic littoral and make their way to America
by the Aleutian route there was a further infiltration of new ideas. But
when more venturesome sailors began to navigate the open seas and ex-
ploit Polynesia, for centuries - there was a more or less constant influx
of customs and beliefs, which were drawn from Egypt and Babylonia,
from the MediteiTanean and East Africa, from India and Indonesia, China
and Japan, Cambodia and Oceania. One and the same fundamental
idea, such as the attributes of the serpent as a water-god, reached
America in an infinite variety of guises, Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian,
Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese, and from this amazing jumble of
confusion the local priesthood of Central America built up a system of
beliefs which is distinctively American, though most of the ingredients
and the principles of synthetic composition were borrowed fi^om the Old
World.
Every possible phase of the early history of the dragon-story
and all the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making
' " The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916, Fig. 4, "The
Serpent-Bird ".
- Probably from about 300 B.C. to 700 A.D.
88 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
of it have been preserved in American pictures and legends in a be-
wildering variety of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of compli-
cated symbolism and picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India
and Eastern Asia, the power controlling water was identified both with
a serpent (which in the New World, as in the Old, was often equipped
with such inappropriate and arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and
crests) and a god, who was either associated or confused Math an ele-
phant. Now many of the attributes of these gods, as personifications
of the life-giving powers of water, are identical with those of the
Babylonian god Ea and the Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as
warriors with the respective sons and representatives, Marduk and
Horus. The composite animal of Ea- Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the
Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the vehicle of Varuna in India,
whose relationship to Indra was in some respects analogous to that of
Ea to Marduk in Babylonia/ The Indian " sea-goat " or Makara
was in fact intimately associated both with Varuna and with Indra.
This monster assumed a great variety of forms, such as the crocodile,
the dolphin, the sea-serpent or dragon, or combinations of the heads of
different animals with a fish's body (Fig. 1 4). Amongst these we find
an elephant- headed form of the makara, which was adopted as far
east as Indonesia and as far west as Scotland.
I have already called attention" to the part played by the makara
in deteraiining the development of the form of the elephant-headed
god in Ameiica. Another fonn of the 7nak.ara is described in the
following American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated
version of the original dragon-story of the Old World.
In 1912 Hernandez translated and published a Maya manuscript '
which had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days
^ For information concerning Ea's " Goat-Fish," which can truly be
called the " Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian
makara, the mermaid, the " sea-serpent," the " dolphin of Aphrodite,"
and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's " Seal Cylinders
of Western Asia," pp. 382 ct scq. and 399 et seq. ; and especially the
detailed reports in de Morgan's Memoires (Delegation en Perse).
' Nature, op. cit., supra.
'^ Juan Martinez Hernandez, "La Creacion del Mundo segun los
Mayas," Paginas Ineditas del MS. De Chumayel, International Congress
of Amej'icanists, Proceediui^s of the Xl'III. Session, London, 1912, p.
164.
Fig. 14.
A. The so-called " sea-goat " of Babylonia, a creature compounded of
the antelope and fish of Ea.
B. The " sea-goat " as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.
C to K — a series of varieties of the mal^ara from the Buddhist Rails
at Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 B.C. — yO'A.D., after Cunningham
("Archaeological Survey of India," Vol. Ill, 1873, Plates IX and
XXIX).
L. The makara as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood.
It is not difficult to understand how^, in the course of the easterly diffusion
of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the
American Elephant-headed God.
Fig. 14
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 89
of the conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six
years ago. It is an account of the creation, and includes the follo^v-
ing passages : " All at once came the water [? rain] after the
dragon was earned away. The heaven was broken up ; it fell upon
the earth ; and they say that CiDilnl-ti-kit (four gods), the four
Baccab, were those who destroyed it. ... ' The whole world,' said
Ak-mic-chek-nalc (he who seven times makes fruitful), 'proceeded
from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he descended to make
fruitful Itzaiu-kab-aiu (the female whale with alligator-feet), when
he came down from the central angle of the heavenly region (p.
171).
Hernandez adds that " the old fishemien of Yucatan still call the
whale Itzani. : this explains the name of Itzaes, by which the Mayas
\Nere known before the founding of Mayapan ".
The close analogy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase de-
scribing the coming of the water " after the dragon was carried away ".
Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant makara, which was confused in
the Old World v/ith the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes
also regarded as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the " female whale
vsith the alligator- feet " was only an American version of the old
Indian legend.
All this seizes, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn hom
the other sources of information which I have already indicated, but
also to suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their
pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from
the same mythology.'
It is of considerable interest and importance to note that in the
earliest dated example of Maya workmanship (from Tuxtla, in the
V era Cruz State of Mexico), for which Spinden assigns a tentative date
of 235 B.C., an unmistakable elephant figures among the four hiero-
glyphs which Spinden reproduces {op. cit. , p. 1 7 1 ). A similar
hieroglyphic sign is found in the Chinese records of the Early Chow
Dynasty (John Ross, "The Origin of the Chinese People," 1916,
p. 132).
The use of the numerals four and seven in the narrative translated
^ From the folk-lore of America I have collected many interesting
variants of the Indra story and other legends (and artistic designs) of the
elephant. I hope to publish these in the near future.
90 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
by Hernandez, as in so many other American documents, is itself, as
Mrs. Zelia Nuttall has so conclusively demonstrated,' a most strik-
ing and conclusive demonstration of the link with the Old World.
Indra was not the only Indian god who was transferred to America,
for all the associated deities, with the characteristic stories of their ex-
ploits,' are also found depicted with childlike directness of incident, but
amazingly luxuriant artistic phantasy, in the Maya and Aztec codices.
We find scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific the familiar
stories of the dragon. One mentioned by the Bishop of Wellington
refers to a New Zealand dragon with jaws like a crocodile's, which
spouted water like a whale. It lived in a fresh-water lake." In the
same number of the idxtvt Journal Sir George Grey gives extracts from
a Maori legend of the dragon, which he compares with corresponding
passages from Spenser's "Faery Queen ". "Their strict verbal and
poetical conformity with the New Zealand legends are such as at first
to lead to the impression either that Spenser must have stolen his images
and language from the Nev/ Zealand poets, or that they must have
acted unfairly by the English bard " (p. 362). The Maori legend de-
scribes the dragon as "in size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like
a hideous Uzard ; for in its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its
tough skin, its sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard " (p.
364).
Now the attributes of the Chinese and Japanese dragon as the
controller of rain, thunder and lightning are identical with those of the
American elephant- headed god. It also is associated with the East and
with the tops of mountains. It is identified with the Indian Naga, but
the conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is either
in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the gods
are identified with the serpent : but among the Aryans, who were
hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-god is the enemy of the Naga. In
America the confusion becomes more pronounced because Tlaloc
(Chac) represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The repre-
sentation in the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tra-
^ Peabody Museum Papers, 1901.
^ See, for example, Wilfrid Jackson's " Shells as Evidence of the Mi-
gration of Early Culture," pp. 50-66.
^ " Notes on the Maoris, etc.," Journal of the Ethnological Society,
vol. i., 1869, p. 368.
I
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 91
dition which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without
understanding its meaning.
In China and japan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent
part, for the dragon is, like the Indian Naga, a beneficent creature,
which approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian
Osiiis. It is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of
water and its life-giving powers : it is identified with the emperor, with
his standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain,
and prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other
words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the
giver of immortalit}'.
But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East
can thus be assimilated to those of the Indian Naga and the Babylonian
and Egyptian Water God, who is also the king, anatomically he is
usually represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Baby-
Ionian composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not
of his avian feet.
In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an
accurate and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is
mainly Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to
dignify by refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections
between Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and
the Old World," makes the following statement (in the course of a
discussion of the myths relating to horned snakes in California) : "a
similar monster, possessing antlers, and sometimes wdngs, is also very
common in Algonkin and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As
a rule the horned serpent is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder
bird. Among the Pueblo Indians the horned snake seems to have
considerable prestige in religious belief. ... It lives in the water or in
the sky and is connected v\dth rain or lightning." ^
Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped v^th those distinctive
tokens of Chinese oiigin, the deer's antlers ; and along with it a snake
with less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Baby-
lonia. A horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old
World does occur in California ; but its " horns " are so insignificant
as to make it highly improbable that they could have been in any way
responsible for the obtrusive role played by horns in these widespread
^Op. at., p. 231.
92 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
American stories. But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories
is established by the horned serpent's achievements.
It "lives in the water or the sky " like its homologue in the Old
World, and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the
Cerastes is actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths
therefore have no possible relationship with the natural habits of the
real snakes. They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have
acquired as the result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical
incidents.
It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree im-
probable that this long chain of chance circumstances should have
happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the
creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer
Amencan snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere
vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have
noticed or recognized as such.
But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian
homologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further
corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the
chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I
have mentioned in this lecture.
In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an
American dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends
of a winged serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be as-
signed to this sketch : but as v/e know that this particular tribe retains
the legend of just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this
drawing as something more than a jest.
" Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near
Ava, Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters ob-
served by him were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles
S. Mason, of Toledo, Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the
Bureau of Ethnology. Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy
of such drawing, but from the general appearance of the sketches the
originals of which they are copies were probably made by one of the
middle Algonquin tribes of Indians.^
' I quote this and the following paragraphs verbatim from Garrick
iMallery, " Picture Writing of the American Indians," \^th Annual Report,
3-89, Bureau of Ethnology {Smithsonian Institute), p. 78.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 93
" The ' Piasa ' rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by
the missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immedi-
ately above the city of Alton, Illmois. "
Marquette's remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman as
follows : —
" On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and
green, a pair of monsters, each ' as large as a calf, with horns like a
deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body
covered with scales ; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round
the body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a
fish.' "
Another version, by Davidson and Struve, of the discovery of
the petroglyph is as follows : —
" Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad
bosom of the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois, they
soon fell into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonish-
ment beheld the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty
limestone front. According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures
had the face of a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and
the tail of a fish so long that it passed around the body, over the head,
and between the legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly
impressed the mind of the pious missionary with the necessity of sub-
stituting for this monsti'ous idolatiy the worship of the true God."
A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the fol-
lowing description of the same rock : —
" Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth
rock in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50
feet from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics,
of great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line
from east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paint-
ings, though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part de-
stroyed, marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling
dov^. "
Mr. Mc Adams, of Alton, Illinois, says, " The name Piasa is
Indian and signifies, in the Illini, the bird which devours men ". He
furnishes a spuited pen-and-ink sketch, 1 2 by 15 inches m size and
purporting to represent the ancient painting described by Marquette.
94 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
On the picture is inscribed the following in ink : " Made by Wm.
Dennis, April 3rd, 1825". The date is in both letters and figures.
On the top of the picture in large letters are the two words, " FLYING
DRAGON ". This picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham
family of Madison county and bears the evidence of its age, is repro-
duced as Fig. 3.
He also publishes another representation with the following
remarks : —
" One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever
seen is in an old German publication entitled ' The Valley of the
Mississippi Illustrated. Eighty illustrations from Nature, by H. Lewis,
fi'om the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,' published about
the year 1 839 by Arenz & Co., Dusseldorf, Gennany. One of the
Fig. 3.— Wm. Dennis's Drawing of ihe " Flying Dragon " Depicted on the Rocks
AT Piasa, Illinois.
large full-page plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton,
with the figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is repre-
sented to have been taken on the spot by artists from Germany. ... In
the German picture there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines
of the second face a ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the
bluff's face might have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the
monsters, for in later years writers speak of but one figure. The whole
face of the bluff was quarried away in 1 846-47. "
The close agreement of this account with that of the Chinese and
Japanese dragon at once arrests attention. The anatomical peculiarities
are so extraordinary that if Pere Marquette's account is trustworthy
there is no longer any room for doubt of the Chinese or Japanese deriva-
tion of this composite creature. If the account is not accepted we will
be driven, not only to attribute to the pious seventeenth-century mission-
aiy serious dishonesty or culpable gullibility, but also to credit him with
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 95
a remarkably precise knowledge of Mongolian archaeology. When
Algonkin legends are recalled, however, I think we are bound to
accept the missionaiy's account as substantially accurate.
Minns claims that representations of the dragon are unknown in
China before the Han dynasty. But the legend of the dragon is
much more ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser.^
He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the i ih King\
and shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake,
which [used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring ".
"It is the god of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in
the rice fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds), in
other words when he makes the rain fertilize the giound " (p. 38).
In the Shii King there is a reference to the dragon as one of the
symbolic figures painted on the upper garment of the emperor Hwang
Ti (who according to the Chinese legends, which of course are not
above reproach, reigned in the twenty-seventh century B.C.). In this
ancient literature there are numerous references to the dragon, and not
merely to the legends, but also to I'epresentations of the benign monster
on garments, banners and metal tablets.^ "The ancient texts . . . are
short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old China with
regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at present] he was
the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the harbinger of blessings,
and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are the holy beings
on earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of Imperial power is
based upon this ancient conception" {pp. cit., p. 42),
In the fifth appendix to the Yzh King, which has been ascribed to
Confucius (i.e. three centuries earlier than the Han dynasty mentioned
by Mr. Minns), it is stated that " Ivicn (Heaven) is a horse, Kzvuti
(Earth) is a cow, Chen {Thunder^ is a dragon" {pp. cit., p. 37)."
The philosopher Hwai Nan Tsze (who died 1 22 B.C.) declared
that the dragon is the origin of all creatures, winged, haiiy, scaly, and
^ Op. cit., pp. 35 et seq.
' See de Visser, p. 41 .
" There can be no doubt that the Chinese dragon is the descendant of
the early Babylonian monster, and that the inspn-ation to create it probably
reached Shensi during the third millennium B.C. by the route indicated in
my " Incense and Libations" (Bu/t. Jolm Rylands Library, vol. iv., No.
2, p. 239). Some centuries later the Indian dragon reached the Far East
via Indonesia and mingled with his Babylonian cousin in Japan and China.
96 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
mailed ; and he propounded a scheme of evolution (de Visser, p. 65).
He seems to have tried to explain away the fact that he had never
actually witnessed the dragon performing some of the remarkable feats
attributed to it : " Mankind cannot see the dragons rise : wind and
rain assist them to ascend to a great height " {pp. cit., p. 65). Con-
lucius also is credited wath the frankness of a similar confession : " As
to the dragon, we cannot understand his riding on the wind and clouds
and his ascending to the sky. To-day 1 saw Lao Tsze ; is he not
like the dragon ? " (p. 65).
This does not necessarily mean that these learned men were scep-
tical of the beliefs which tradition had forged in their minds, but that
the dragon had the power of hiding itself in a cloak of invisibility, just
as clouds (in which the Chinese saw dragons) could be dissipated in
the sky. The belief in these powers of the dragon was as sincere as
that of learned men of other countries in the beneficent attributes
which tradition had taught them to assign to their particular deities,
in the passages I have quoted the Chinese scholars were presumably
attempting to bridge the gap between the ideas inculcated by faith and
the evidence of their senses, in much the same sort of spirit as, for
instance, actuated Dean Buckland last century, when he claimed that
the glacial deposits of this country afforded evidence in confirmation oi
the Deluge described in the Book of Genesis.
The tiger and the dragon, the gods of wind and water, are the key-
stones of the doctrine c^ie.^ fung skui, which Professor de Groot has
described in detail.^
He describes it " as a quasi-scientific system, supposed to teach men
where and how to build graves, temples, and dwellings, in order that
the dead, the gods, and the living may be located therein exclusively,
or as far as possible, under the auspicious influences of Nature ". The
dragon plays a most important part in this system, being " the chief
spirit of water and rain, and at the same time representing one of the
four quarters of heaven (i.e. the East, called the Azure Dragon, and
the first of the seasons, spring)." The word Dragon comprises the
high grounds in general, and the water streams which have their sources
therein or wind their way through them."^
^ " Religious System of China," vol. iii., chap, xii., pp. 936-1056.
" This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from de Visser, op. cit.^
pp. 59 and 60.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 97
The attributes thus assigned to the Blue Dragon, his control of
water and streams, his dwelling on high mountains whence they spring,
and his association with the East, will be seen to reveal his identity
with the so-called "god B" of American archaeologists, the elephant-
headed god T I aloe of the Aztecs, Ckac of the Mayas, whose more
direct parent was Indra.
It is of interest to note that, according to Gerini,' the word A\ioa
denotes not only a snake but also an elephant. Both the Chinese
dragon and the Mexican elephant-god are thus linked with the Naga,
who is identified both with Indra himself and Indra's enemy Vritra.
This is another instance of those remarkable contradictions that one
meets at every step in pursuing the dragon. In the confusion resulting
from the blending of hostile tribes and diverse cultures the Aryan deity
who, both for religious and political reasons, is the enemy of the Nagas
becomes himself identified with a Naga !
I have already called attention {Nature, ]diXi. 27, 1916) to the
fact that the graphic form of representation of the American elephant-
headed god was derived from Indonesian pictures of the niakara. In
India itself the niakara (see Fig. 14) is represented in a gi'eat variety
of forms, most of which are prototypes of different kinds of dragons.
Hence the homology of the elephant-headed god with the other
dragons is further established and shown to be genetically related to
the evolution of the protean manifestations of the dragon's form.
The dragon in China is " the heavenly giver of fertilizing rain "
{pp. cit., p. 36). In the Shu A'm^ " the emblematic figures of the
ancients are given as the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountain, the
dragon, and the variegated animals (pheasants) which are depicted
on the upper sacrificial garment of the Emperor " (p. 39). In the
Li Ki the unicom, the phoenix, the tortoise, and the dragon are called
the four ting (p. 39), which de Visser translates "spiritual beings,"
creatures with enormously strong vital spirit. The dragon possesses
the most ling- of all creatures (p. 64). The tiger is the deadly enemy
of the dragon (p. 42).
The dragon sheds a brilliant light at night (p. 44), usually fiom
his glittering eyes. He is the giver of omens (p. 45), good and bad,
^ G. E. Gerini, " Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern
Asia," Asiatic Society's Monograptis, No. 1, 1909, p. 146.
7
98 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
rains and floods. The dragon-horse is a vital spirit of Heaven and
Earth (p. 58) and also of river water : it has the tail of a huge
serpent.
The ecclesiastical vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endow^ed with
magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control
the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events,
such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses.
These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon
the back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains
is embroidered as a symbol of the world : on each side (the right and
left) of it a large dragon arises above the billows to represent the fertiliz-
ing rain. They are surrounded by gold-thread figures representing
clouds and spirals typifying rolling thunder.^
A ball, sometimes with a spiral decoration, is commonly repre-
sented in front of the Chinese dragon. The Chinese writer Koh Hung
tells us that " a spiral denotes the rolling of thunder from which issues
a flash of lightning ".^ De Visser discusses this question at some length
and refers to Hirth's claim that the Chinese triquetrum, i.e., the well-
known three-comma shaped figure, the Japanese luitsu-tonioe, the
ancient spiral, represents thunder also."^ Before discussing this question,
which involves the consideration of the almost world-wide belief in a
thunder-weapon and its relationship to the spiral ornament, the octopus,
iDe Visser, p. 102, and de Greet, vi., p. 1265, Plate XVIII. The
reference te " a range ef mountains ... as a symbol ef the world " re-
calls the Egyptian representation ef the eastern horizon as twe hills between
which Hather or her sen arises (see Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians,"
vol. ii., p. 101 ; and compare Griffith's "Hieroglyphs," p. 30): the same
conception was adopted in Mesopotamia (see Ward, " Seal Cylinders of
Western Asia," fig. 412, p. 156) and in the Mediterranean (see Evans,
" Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 'hi et scq.). It is a remarkable
fact that Sir Arthur Evans, who, upon p. 64 of his memoir, reproduces twe
drawings of the Egyptian " horizon " supporting the sun's disk, should have
failed to recognize in it the prototype of what he calls "the herns ef con-
secration ". Even if the confusion of the " horizon " with a cow's herns
was very ancient (for the herns ef the Divine Cow supporting the moon
made this inevitable), this rationalization should net blind us as to the real
origin of the idea, which is preserved in the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian,
Cretan and Chinese pictures (see Fig. 26, facing p. 1 88).
^De Visser, p. 103.
^P. 104, The Chinese triquetrum has a circle in the centre and five or
eight commas.
JIK
Fig. 15. ^Photograph of a Chinese Embroidery in the Manchester School of
Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon Symbol
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 99
the pearl, the swastika and triskele, let us examine further the problem
of the dragon's ball (see Fig. I 5).
De Groot regards the dragon as a thunder-god and therefore, like
Hirth, assumes that the supposed thunder-ball is being belched forth
and not being sivalloweci by the dragon. But de Visser, as the result
Oi a conversation with Mr. Kramp and the study of a Chinese picture
in Slacker's "Chats on Oriental China" (1908, p. 54), puts forward
the suggestion that the ball is the moon or the pearl-moon which the
dragon is swallo^ving, thereby causing the fertilizing rain. The Chinese
themselves refer to the ball as the " precious pearl," which, under the
influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that
grants all desires " and is under the special protection of the Naga,
i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum :
" Was the ball originally also a pearl, not of Buddhism but of
Taoism ? "
In reply to this question I may call attention to the fact that the
germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly im-
bued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of life-giving
and prosperity- conferring powers : ^ it was not only identified with the
moon, but also was itself a particle of moon-substance which fell as dew
into the gaping oyster. It was the very people who held such views
about pearls and gold who, when searching for alluvial gold and fresh-
water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for transferrmg these same
life-giving properties to jade ; and the magical value thus attached to
jade was the nucleus, so to speak, around which the earliest civilization
of China was crystallized.
As we shall see, in the discussion of the thunder- weapon (p. 121 ),
the luminous pearl, which was believed to have fallen h'om the sky,
was homologized v^th the thunderbolt, with the functions of which its
own magical properties were assimilated.
Kramp called de Vissei's attention to the fact that the Chinese
hieroglyphic character for the dragon's ball is compounded of the signs
for jewel and niooii, which is also given in a Japanese lexicon as
divine pea?'!, the pearl of the blight moon.
" When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient
^ See on this my paper " The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization,"
now being published in the Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester
Literary and Philosophical Society.
100 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Chinese may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed
this pearl, more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea " (de Visser,
p. 108).
The difficulty de Visser finds in regarding his own theory as wholly
satisfactory is, first, the red colour of the ball, and secondly, the spiral
pattern upon it. He explains the colour as possibly an attempt to re-
present the pearl's lustre. But de Visser seems to have overlooked the
fact that red and rose-coloured pearls obtained from the conch- shell
were used in China and Japan.^
"The spiral is much used in delineating the sacred pearls of Bud-
dhism, so that it might have served also to design those of Taoism ;
although I must acknowledge that the spiral of the Buddhist pearl goes
upward, while the spiral of the dragon is flat " (p. 1 03).
De Visser sums up the whole argument in these words : —
"These are, however, all mere suppositions. The only facts we
know are : the eager attitude of the dragons, ready to grasp and
swallow the ball ; the ideas of the Chinese themselves as to the ball
being the moon or a pearl ; the existence of a kind of sacred "moon-
pearl " ; the red colour of the ball, its emitting flames and its spiral-
like form. As the three last facts are in favour of the thunder theory,
I should be inclined to prefer the latter. Yet I am convinced that the
dragons do not belch out the thunder. If their trying to g>'cisp or
swai/ow the thunder could be explained, I should immediately accept
the theory concernmg the thunder-spiral, especially on account of the
flames it emits. But I do not see the reason why the god of thunder
should persecute thunder itself. Therefore, after having given the
above facts that the reader may take them into consideration, I feel
obliged to say : ' non liquet ' ' (p. 1 08).
It does not seem to have occurred to the distinguished Dutch
scholar, who has so lucidly put the issue before us, that his demonstra-
tion of the fact of the ball being the pearl-moon about to be swallowed
by the dragon does not preclude it being also confused with the thunder.
Elsewhere in this volume I have referred to the origin of the spiral sym-
bolism and have shown that it became associated with the pearl before
it became the symbol of thunder. The pearl- association in fact was
^ Wilfrid Jackson, " Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early
Culture," p. 106.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 101
one of the links in the chain of events which made the pearl and the
spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.'
It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the
true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the
spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting
light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of
the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was
rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the light
it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational for a
thunder-god to swallow his own thunder : but popular interpretations
of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is deeply buried in
the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and almost invariably
irrelevant.
In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times
of the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins ' throws light upon the
real significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. " Old legends
are varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus : Indra,
who slays Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the
sun's mouth on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swal-
lowing him, and the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The
sun vomits out the moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and
increases again, to serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said
that when the moon is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."
This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the
ball. It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by
the dragon.
The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the
Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea.
The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The
cultural influences which reached Japan from the south by way of
Indonesia^many centuries before the coming of Buddhism — naturally
emphasized the serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the
ocean.
But the river-gods, or " water- fathers," were real four-footed
dragons identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the
^ I shall discuss this more fully in " The Birth of Aphrodite ".
" " Religions of India," p. 197,
102 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
same time were strictly homologous with the Naga Rajas or cobra-
kings of India.
The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called
" Abundant-Pearl- Prince, ' who had a magnificent palace at the
bottom of the sea. His daughter (" Abundant- Pearl- Princess")
married a youth whom she observed, reflected in the well, sitting on a
cassia tree near the castle gate. Ashamed at his presence at her lying-in
she was changed into a want or crocodile (de Visser, p. 1 39), elsewhere
described as a dragon {fjiakard). De Visser gives it as his opinion
that the wani is " an old Japanese dragon, or serpent-shaped sea-god,
and the legend is an ancient Japanese tale, dressed in an Indian garb
by later generations " (p. 1 40). He is arguing that the Japanese
dragon existed long before Japan came under Indian influence. But
he ignores the fact that at a very early date both India and China
were diversely influenced by Babylonia, the great breeding place of
dragons ; and, secondly, that Japan was influenced by Indonesia, and
through it by the West, for many centuries before the arrival of such
later Indian legends as those relating to the palace under the sea, the
castle gate and the cassia tree. As Aston (quoted by de Visser)
remarks, all these incidents and also the well that serves as a mirror,
" form a combination not unknown to European folklore".
After de Visser had given his own views, he modified them
(on p. 141) when he learned that essentially the same dragon-stories
had been recorded in the Kei Islands and Minahassa (Celebes). In
the light of this new information he h'ankly admits that "the re-
semblance of several features of this myth with the Japanese one is so
striking, that we may be sure that the latter is of Indonesian origin."
He goes further when he recognizes that " probably the foreign in-
vaders, who in prehistoric times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia,
and brought the myth with them " (p. 141 ). The evidence recently
brought together by W. J. Peiry in his book "The Megalithic
Culture of Indonesia " makes it certain that the people of Indonesia in
turn got it from the West.
An old painting reproduced by F. W. K. Miiller,^ who called
de Visser 's attention to these interesting stories, shows Hohodemi (the
^ " Mythe der Kei-Insulaneriund Verwandtes," Zeitsch.f. Ethnologie,
vol. XXV., 1893, pp. 533 et seq.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 103
youth on the cassia tree who mariied the princess) returning home
mounted on the back of a crocodile, like the Indian Varuna upon the
7nakara in a drawing reproduced by the late Sir George Birdwood.'
The warn or crocodile thus introduced from India, via Indonesia,
IS really the Chmese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed.
Aston refers to Japanese pictures in which the Abundant- Pearl- Prince
and his daughter are represented with dragon's heads appearing over
their human ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain
their forms as 7van'i or crocodiles.
The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian
motive, transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de
Visser, p. 1 42), and, I may add, also to America.
[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of
the Liverpool Museum has kindly called ray attention to a remarkable
series of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were
obtained in the course of excavations made by Mr. T. W. F. Gann,
M.R.C.S., an officer in the Medical Semce of British Honduras (see
his account of the excavations in Part II. of t'he 19th Annual Report
of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington).
Among them is a pottery figure of a wa7ii or niakara in the form of
an alligator, equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of
Eastern Asia) ; and its skin is studded with circular elevations, pre-
sumably meant to represent the spots upon the star-spangled " Celestial
Stag" of the Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures men-
tioned by Aston, a human head is seen emerging from the creature's
throat. It affords a most definite and convincing demonstration of the
sources of American culture.]
The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the
pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom
of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy
enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the logical
result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the influence of which
upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances which was re-
sponsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great scientific
theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn played a great,
if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief in a sky world, or
heaven.
' See Fig. 1 4.
104 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The Evolution of the Dragon.
The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back
primarily to India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and
Babylonia. The dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek
channels to the same ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of
Africa are derived either from Egypt, from the /Egean, or from India.
All dragons that strictly conform to the conventional idea of what such
a wonder-beast should be can be shown to be sprung from the fertile
imagination of ancient Sumer, the "great breeding place of monsters"
(Minns).
But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other
countries is full of complexities ; and the dragon-myth is made up oi
many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.
In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-
story. Yet all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and
the legends are compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in
perhaps a more primitive and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence,
if Egypt does not provide dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us
with the evidence without which the dragon's evolution would be quite
unintelligible.
Egyptian literature ai^ords a clearer insight into the development
of the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than
we can obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental
stratum of deities. And in the three legends : The Destruction of
Mankind, The Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between
Horus and Set, it has preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga.
Babylonian literature has shown us how this raw material was worked
up into the definite and famiHar story, as well as how the features of
a variety of animals were blended to form the composite monster.
India and Greece, as well as more distant parts of Africa, Europe,
and Asia, and even America have presei^ed many details that have
been lost in the real home of the monster.
In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a
clear account is given of the original attributes of Osiris. " Horus
comes, he recognizes his father in thee [Osiris], youthful in thy name of
' Fresh Water '." " Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at
the beginning of the seasons ; gods and men live by the moisture that is
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 105
in thee." He is also identified with the inundation of the river. " It
is Unis [the dead king identified with Osiris] who inundates the land."
He also brings the wind and guides it. It is the breath of life which
raises the king horn the dead as an Osiris. The wine-press god
comes to Osiris bearing wine-juice and the great god becomes " Lord
of the overflowing wine " : he is also identified with barley and with
the beer made from it. Certain trees also are personifications of the
god.
But Osiris was regarded not only as the waters upon earth, the
rivers and streams, the moisture in the soil and in the bodies of animals
and plants, but also as "the waters of Hfe that are in the sky".
" As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he
may even become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed
thus : ' Thou art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green
(Sea) ; lo, thou art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos) ; lo, thou art
turned about, thou art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu
(/Egeans)."
This series of interesting extracts from Professor Breasted's " Re-
ligion and Thought in Ancient Egypt " (pp. 1 8-26) gives the earliest
Egyptians' own ideas of the attributes of Osiris. The Babylonians re-
garded Ea in almost precisely the same light and endowed him with
identical powers. But there is an important and significant difference
between Osiris and Ea. The former was usually represented as a man,
that is, as a dead king, whereas Ea Avas represented as a man wearing
a fish-skin, as a fish, or as the composite monster with a fish's body
and tail, which was the prototype of the Indian iiiakara and "the
father of dragons ".
In attempting to understand the creation of the dragon it is im-
portant to remember that, although Osiris and Ea were regarded
primarily as personifications of the beneficent life-giving powers of
water, as the bringers of fertility to the soil and the givers of life and im-
mortality to living creatures, they were also identified with the destructive
forces of water, by which men were drowned or their welfare affected
in various ways by storms of sea and wind.
Thus Osiris or the fish-god Ea could destroy mankind. In other
words the fish-dragon, or the composite monster fomied of a fish and
an antelope, could represent the destructive forces of wind and water.
Thus even the malignant dragon can be the homologue of the usually
106 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
beneficent gods Osiris and Ea, and their Aryan sunogates Mazdah
and Varuna.
By a somewhat analogous process of archaic rationalization the
sons respectively of Osiris and Ea, the sun-gods Horus and Marduk,
acquired a similarly confused reputation. Although their outstanding
achievements were the overcoming of the powers of evil, and, as the
givers of light, conquering darkness, their character as warriors made
them also powers of destruction. The falcon of Horus thus became
also a symbol of chaos, and as the thunder-bird became the most ob-
trusive feature in the weird anatomy of the composite Mesopotamian
dragon and his more modern bird-footed brood, which ranges from
Western Europe to the Far East of Asia and America.
That the sun-god derived his functions directly or indirectly fi'om.
Osiris and Hathor is shown by his most primitive attributes, for in
" the earliest sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life
and increase". "Men said of him: 'Thou hast driven away the
storm, and hast expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds '.'
Horus Wcis in fact the son of Osiris and Hathor, from whom he de-
rived his attributes. The invention of the sun-god was not, as most
scholars pretend, an attempt to give direct expression to the fact that the
sun is the source of fertility. That is a discovery of modern science.
The sun-god acquired his attributes secondarily (and for definite historical
reasons) from his parents, who were responsible for his birth.
The quotation from the Pyramid Texts is of special interest as an
illustration of one of the results of the assimilation of the idea of Osiris
as the controller of water with that of a sky-heaven and a sun-god.
The sun-god's powers are rationalized so as to bring them into con-
formity with the earliest conception of a god as a power controlling
water.
Breasted attempts to interpret the statements concerning the storm
and rain-clouds as references to the enemies of the sun, who steal the sk)'-
god's eye, i.e., obscure the sun or moon. The incident of Horus's loss
of an eye, which looms so large in Eg)'ptian legends, is possibly more
closely related to the earliest attempts at explaining eclipses of the sun
and moon, the " eyes " of the sky. The obscuring of the sun and
moon by clouds is a matter of little significance to the Egyptian :
but the modern Egyptian fellah, and no doubt his predecessors also,
^ Breasted, op. cit. , p. II,
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 107
regard eclipses with much concern. Such events excite great alarm,
for the peasants consider them as actual combats between the powers
of good and evil.
In other countries where rain is a blessing and not, as in Egypt,
merely an unwelcome mconvenience, the clouds play a much more
prominent part in the popular beliefs. In the Rig- Veda the power
that holds up the clouds is evil : as an elaboration of the ancient
Egyptian conception of the sky as a Divine Cow, the Great Mother,
the Aiyan Indians regarded the clouds as a herd of cattle which the
Vedic warrior-god Indra (who in this respect is the homologue of the
Egyptian wanior Horus) stole from the powers of evil and bestowed
upon mankind. In other words, like Horus, he broke up the clouds
and brought rain.
The antithesis between the two aspects of the character of these
ancient deities is most pronounced in the case of the other member of
this most primitive Trinity, the Great Mother. She was the great
beneficent giver of life, but also the controller of life, which implies
that she was the death-dealer. But this evil aspect of her character
developed only under the stress of a peculiar dilemma in which she
was placed. On a famous occasion in the very remote past the great
Giver of Life was summoned to rejuvenate the ageing king. The only
elixir of life that was known to the pharmacopoeia of the times was
human blood : but to obtain this life-blood the Giver of Life was com-
pelled to slaughter mankind. She thus became the destroyer of man-
kind in her lioness avatar as Sekhet.
The earliest known pictorial representation of the dragon (Fig, 1)
consists of the forepart of the sun-god's falcon or eagle united with
the hindpart of the mother- goddess's lioness. The student of modern
heraldry would not regard this as a dragon at all, but merely a gryphon
or griffin. A recent writer on heraldry has complained that, *' in spite
of frequent connections, this creature is persistently confused in the
popular mind wath the dragon, which is even more purely imaginary ".'
But the investigator of the early history of these wonder-beasts is com-
pelled, even at the risk of incuning the herald's censure, to regard the
gryphon as one of the earliest known tentative efforts at dragon-making.
But though the fish, the falcon or eagle, and the composite eagle-lion
' G. W. Eve. " Decorative Heraldry," 1897, p. 35.
108 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
monster are early known pictorial representations Oi the dragon, good
or bad, the serpent is probably more ancient still (Fig. 2).
^' The earliest form assum.ed by the power of evil was the serpent :
but it is important to remember that, as each of the primary deities can
J c. cit., p. 8.
^ " The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.
* Evans, op. cit.. Fig. 8, c, p. 17.
There is an excellent photograph of this in Donald McKenzie's " Myths
of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe," facing p. 160.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 125
we have already seen that the Soudanese Osiris was identified with a
spear and falling stars.
According to Dr. Budge ' the Egyptian hieroglyph used as the
determinative of the word ncter, meaning god or spirit, is the axe with
a handle. Mr. Griffith, however, interprets it as a roll of yellow cloth
(" Hieroglyphics," p. 46). On Hittite seals the axe sometimes takes
the place of the god Teshub."
Sir Arthur Evans endeavours to explain these conceptions by a
vague appeal to certain natural phenomena {pp. cit., pp. 20 and 21);
but the identical traditions of widespread peoples are much too arbi-
trary and specific to be interpreted by any such speculations.
Sanchoniathon's story of Baetylos being the son of Ouranos is
merely a poetical way of saying that the sun-god fell to earth in the
form of a stone or a weapon, as a Zeus Kappotas or a Horus in the
form of a winged disk, Hying down from heaven to destroy the
enemies of Re.
"The idea of their [the weapons] flying through the air or falling
from heaven, and their supposed power of burning vvath inner fire or
shining in the nighttime," was not primarily suggested, as Sir Arthur
Evans claims {pp.cit., p. 21), "by the phenomena associated with
meteoric stones," but was a rationalization of the events described in
the early Egyptian and Babylonian stories.
They "shine at night" because the original weapon of destruction
was the moon as the Eye of Re. They " burn with inward fire," like
the Babylonian Marduk, when in the fight with the dragon Tiamat
"he filled his body with burning flame" (King, op. ciL, p. 71), be-
cause they ive?'e fire, the fire of the sun and of lightning, the fire spat
out by the Eye of Re.
Further evidence in corroboration of these views is provided by the
fact that in the /Egean area the double-axe replaces the moon between
the cow's horns (Evans, op. cit., Fig. 3, p. 9).
In King's " Babylonian Religion " (pp. 70 and 7 1) we are told how
the gods provided Marduk with an invincible weapon in preparation
for the combat with the dragon : and the ancient scribe himself sets
forth a series of its homologues : —
^ " The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., pp. 63 et seq.
- See, for example. Ward, t'/. a'/., p. 41 1.
126 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
He made ready his bow . . .
He slung a spear . . .
The bow and quiver . . .
He set the hghtning in front of him,
With burning flame he filled his body.
An ancient Egyptian writer has put on record further identifica-
tions of weapons. In the 95th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, the
deceased is reported to have said : "I am he who sendeth forth terror
into the powers of rain and thunder. ... 1 have made to flourish my
knife which is in the hand of Thoth in the powers of rain and
thunder" (Budge, " Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 414).
The identification of the winged disk with the thunderbolt which
emerges so definitely from these homologies is not altogether new,
for it was suggested some years ago by Count d' Alviella ^ in these
words : —
" On seeing some representations of the Thunderbolt which recall
in a remarkable manner the outlines of the Winged Globe, it may be
asked if it was not owing to this latter symbol that the Greeks trans-
formed into a winged spindle the Double Trident derived from As-
syria. At any rate the transition, or, if it be preferred, the combination
of the two symbols is met with in those coins from Northern Africa
where Greek art was most deeply impregnated with Phoenician types.
Thus on coins of Bocchus il. King of Mauretania, figures are found
which M. Lajard connected v,dth the Winged Globe, and M. L.
Miiller calls Thunderbolts, but which are really the result of crossing
between these two emblems ".
The thunderbolt, however, is not always, or even commonly, the
direct representative of the winged disk. It is more often derived
from hghtning or some floral design."
According to Count d' Alviella' "the Trident of Siva at times
exhibits the form of a lotus calyx depicted in the Egyptian manner ".
" Perhaps other transformations of the trisuia might still be found
at Boro-Budur [in Java]. . . . The same Disk which, when trans-
formed into a most complicated ornament, is sometimes crowned by a
Trident, is also met with between two serpents — which brings us back
to the origin of the Winged Circle — the Globe of Egypt with the
^ *' The Migration of Symbols," pp. 220 and 221,
- Blinkenberg, op. cif., p. 53. ^ Op. at., p. 256.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 127
ursi " (see d'AKaella's Fig. 158). "Moreover this ornament, be-
tween which and certain forms of the trisnla the transition is easily
traced, commonly surmounts the entrance to the pagodas depicted in
the bas-reliefs— in exactly the same manner as the Winged Globe
adorns the lintel of the temples in Egypt and Phoenicia."
Thus we find traces of a blending of the two homologous designs,
derived independently from the lotus and the winged disk, which
acquired the same symbolic significance.
The weapon of Poseidon, the so-called " Trident of Neptune," is
" sometimes crovsTied v\dth a trilobate lotus flower, or with three lotus
buds ; in other cases it is depicted in a shape that may well represent
a fishing spear" (Blinkenberg, op. cit., pp. 53 and 54).
" Even if Jacobsthal's interpretation of the flov/er as a common
Greek symbol for fire be not accepted, the conventionalization of the
trident as a lotus blossom is quite analogous to the change, on Greek
soil, of the Assyrian thunderweapon to two flowers pointing in opposite
directions" (p. 54).
But the conception of a flower as a symbol of fire cannot thus
summarily be dismissed. For Sir Arthur Evans has collected all the
stages in the transfonnation of Egyptian palmette pillars into the rayed
pillars of Cyprus, in which the leaflets of the palmette become converted
(in the Cypro- Mycenaean derivatives) into the rays which he calls " the
natural concomitant of divinities of light ".'
The underlying motive which makes such a transference easy is the
Egyptian conception of Hathor as a sacred lotus from which the sun-
god Horus is born. The god of light is identified with the water-
plant, whether lotus, iris or lily ; and the lotus form of Horus can
be correlated with its Hellenic surrogate, Apollo Hyakinthos. " The
flear-de-lys type now takes its place beside the sacred lotus " {pp. cit.,
p. 50). The trident and the fleur-de-lys are thunderweapons because
they represent forms of Horus or his mother.
The classical keraunos is still preserved in Tibet as the dorj'e,
which is identified with Indra's thunderbolt, the vajrar This word is
also applied to the diamond, the " king of stones," which in turn ac-
quired many of the attributes of the pearl, another of the Great
^ " Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 51 and 52.
'^ See Blinkenberg, op. cit., pp. 45-8.
128 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Mother's surrogates, which is reputed to have fallen from heaven like
the thunderbolt.^
The Tibetan dorje, like its Greek original, is obviously a conven-
tionalized flower, the leaf-design about the base of the corona being
quite clearly defined.
The influence of the Winged- Disk Saga is clearly revealed in such
Greek myths as that relating to Ixion. " Euripides is represented by
Aristophanes as declaring that Ait her at the creation devised
The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun." ^
When we read of Zeus in anger binding Ixion to a winged wheel
made of fire, and sending him spinning through the air, we are merely
dealing with a Greek variant of the Egyptian myth in which Re
despatched Horus as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hel-
lenic version the sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for
his ill-treatment of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera
and her cloud-manifestation : but though distorted all the incidents
reveal their original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early
Aryan variants.
It is remarkable that Mr. A. B. Cook, who compared the wheel
of Ixion with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look
deeper for a common origin of the two myths, especially when he got
so far as to identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).
Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder- weapon thus :
" From the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or
three zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was
evolved and carried east and west from the ancient seat of civilization.
^ I must defer consideration of the part played by certain of the Great
Mother's surrogates in the development of the thunder- weapon's symbolism
and the associated folk-lore. I have in mind especially the influence of the
octopus and the cow. The former was responsible in part for the use of
the spiral as a thunder- symbol ; and the latter for the beliefs in the Special
protective power of thunderstones over cows (see Blinkenberg, op. cit^.
The thunder stone was placed over the lintel of the cow- shed for the same
purpose as the winged disk over the door of an Egyptian temple. Until
the relations of the octopus to the dragon have been set forth it is impossible
adequately to discuss the question of the seven-headed dragon, which ranges
from Scotland to Japan and from Scandinavia to the Zambesi. In " The
Birth of Aphrodite " I shall call attention to the basal factors in its evolution.
- A. B. Cook, " Zeus," vol. i., p. 198.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 129
Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and
towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular
attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods. . . . The Indian trisula and the
Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).
Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel
Harris refers to the fact that Apollo's " arrows are said to be light-
nings," and he quotes Pausanias, Apoilodorus and Mr. A, B. Cook
in substantiation of his statements.^ Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and
Apollo, are " concerned with the production of fire ".
According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the
Earth : he made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck
by lightning, was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount /Etna
was placed upon him.'
In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict
of Horus wdth Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tar-
tarus [Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile
brother Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is
against him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the
winged disk) strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The
episode of Mount /Etna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian
legend of the churning of the ocean : Mount Meru is placed in the
sea upon the tortoise avatar of Vishnu and is used to churn the food
of immortality for the gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre
brought h-om Elephantine is pounded with the barley.
The story told by Hyginus leads up to the vision in Revelations
(xu., 7 et seq.): " Thei:e_^as war in heaven ; Michael and his
angels fought against the dragon ; and the dragon fought, and his
angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in
heaven. And the great dragon \vas cast out, that old serpent called
the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world : he was cast
into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."
^ "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 32.
- Tartarus ex Terra procreavit Typhonem, immani magnitudine, specie-
que portentosa, cui centum capita draconum ex humeris enata erant. Hie
Jovem provocavit, si vellet secum de regno centare. Jovis fulmine ardenti
pectus ejus percussit. Cui cum flagraret, montem /Etnam, qui est in
Siciha, super eum imposuit ; qui ex eo adhuc ardere dicitur " (Hyginus,
fab. 152).
no THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of
Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The Hfe-giving Great
Mother tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place.
He becomes the w^arrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's role
but he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the
capacity of the sky-god's '* Eye," so Horus as the other " Eye," the
sun, to w^hich he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of
the winged disk. The winged disk, like the other " Eye of Re,"
was not merely the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind,
but also was the god Horus himself. This early conception involved
the belief that the thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the
fiery weapon but the actual god.
The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as
we have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest
symbol of life-giving and beneficent protective power : yet it is the
weapon used to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus
as well as the baneful thunder-weapon.
The Deer.
One of the most surprising features of the dragon in China, Japan
and America, is the equipment of deer's horns.
In Babylonia both Ea and Marduk are intimately associated with
the antelope or gazelle, and the combination of the head of the antelope
(or in other cases the goat) with the body of a fish is the most char-
acteristic manifestation of either god. In Egypt both Osiris and Horus
are at times brought into relationship vrith the gazelle or antelope, but
more often it represents their enemy Set. Hence, in some parts of
Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of the dragon
in Asiatic stories.^ The cow - of Hathor ( Tiamat) may represent the
dragon also. In East Africa the antelope assumes the role of the hero,"
and is the representative of Horus. In the i^gean area, Asia Minor
^ Frobenius, "The Voice of Africa," vol. ii., p. 467 inter alia.
'^ Op. cit., p. 468.
^J. F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the " Geste of
Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George Hender-
son, Edinburgh, 191 1, p. 136.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 13)
and Europe the antelope, gazelle or the deer, may be associated with
the Great Mother.
In India the god Soma's chariot is drawn by an antelope. I
have already suggested that Soma is only a specialized form of the
Babylonian Ea, whole evil aya^ar is the dragon : there is thus suggested
another link between the antelope and the latter. The Ea-element
explains the fish-scales and the antelope provides the horns. I shall
return to the discussion of this point later.
Vayu or Pavana, the Indian god of the winds, who afterwards
became merged with Indra, rides upon an antelope like the Egyptian
Horus. Soma's attributes also were in large measure taken over by
Indra. Hence in this complex tissue of contradictions we once more
find the dragon-slayer acquiring the insignia, in this case the antelope,
of his mortal enemy.
1 have already referred to the fact that the early Babylonian deities
could also be demons. Tiamat, the dragon whom Marduk fought, was
merely the malevolent avatar of the Great Mother. The dragon
acquired his covering of fish-scales from an evil form of Ea.
In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce claimed that the name of
ha was expressed by an ideograph which signifies literally " the ante-
lope " (p. 280). " Ea was called ' the antelope of the deep,' ' the
antelope the creator,' ' the lusty antelope '. We should have expected
the animal of Ea to have been the fish : the fact that it is not so points
to the conclusion that the culture-god of Southern Babylonia was an
amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine antelope and the
other the divine fish. " Ea was " originally t'tie god of the river and
was also associated with the snake ". Nina was also both the fish-
goddess and the divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the
deep. Professor Sayce then refers to " the curious process of develop-
ment which transformed the old serpent- goddess, ' the lady Nina,' into
the embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven ; but
after all, Nina had sprung from the fish-god of the deep [who also was
For example the red deer occupies the place usually taken by the
goddess's lions upon a Cretan gem (Evans, " Mycenaean Tree and Pillar
Cult," Fig. 32, p. 56) : on the bronze plate from Heddemheim (A. B.
Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., pi. xxxiv., and p. 620) Isis is represented standing
on a hind : Artemis, another avatar of the same Great Mother, was in-
timately associated with deer.
132 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
both antelope and serpent as well, see p. 282], and Tiamat is herself
' the deep ' in Semitic dress " (p. 283).
" At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle rather than as an ante-
lope." The position of the name in the list of animals shows what
species of animal must be meant. Liilwi, " a stag," seems to be a
re-duplicated form of the same word. Both hUini and ehni are said
to be equivalent to sarrn, king (p. 284).
Certain Assyriologists, from whom I asked for enlightenment upon
these philological matters, express some doubt as to the antiquity or to
the reality of the association of the names of Ea and the word for an
antelope, gazelle or stag. But whatever the value of the linguistic
evidence, the archaeological, at any rate as early as the time of Ne-
buchadnezzar I, brings both Ea and Marduk into close association v/ith
a strange creature equipped with the horns of an antelope or gazelle.
The association with the antelope of the homologous deities in India
and Egypt leaves the reality of the connexion in no doubt. I had
hoped that Professor Sayce's evidence would have provided some
explanation of the strange association of the antelope. But whether or
not the philological data justify the inferences which Professor Sayce
drew from them, there can be no doubt concerning the correctness of
his statement that Ea was represented both by fish and antelope, for
in the course of his excavations at Susa M. J. de Morgan brought to
light representations of Ea's animal consisting of an antelope's head on
the body of a fish.^ He also makes the statement that the ideogram
of Ea, tiiraku-apsu, means "antelope of the sea". I have already
(p. 88) referred to the fact that this " antelope of the sea," the so-
called " goat-fish," is identical wath the prototype of the dragon.
If his claim that the names of Ea meant both a " fish " and an
"antelope" were well founded, the pun would have solved this pro-
blem, as it has done in the case of many other puzzles in the history
of early civilization. But if this is not the case, the question is still
open for solution. As Set was held to be personified in all the desert
animals, the gazelle was identified with the demon of evil for this
reason. In her important treatise on " The Asiatic Dionysos" Miss
Gladys Davis tells us that " in his aspect of Moon ' the lord of stars'
^ J. de Morgan, article on " Koudourrous," Mem. Del, en Perse, t. 7,
1905. Figures on p. 143 and p. 148 : see also an earlier article on the same
subject in tome i. of the same series.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 133
Soma has in this character the antelope as his symbol. In fact, one
of the names given to the moon by the early Indians was ' mriga-piplu '
or marked like an antelope" (p. 202). Further she adds: "The
Sanskrit name for the lunar mansion over v^hich Soma presides is
' mriga-siras ' or the deer-headed." If it be admitted that Soma is
merely the Aryan specialization of Ea and Osiris, as I have claimed,
Sayce's association of Ea with the antelope is conoborated, even if it
is not explained.
In China the dragon was sometimes called " the celestial stag " (de
Gi'oot, op. ciL, p. 1 1 43). In Mexico the deer has the same intimate
celestial relations as it has in the Old World (see Seler, ZcU. f. Eth-
nologic, Bd. 41, p. 414). I have already referred to the remarkable
Maya deer-crocodile makara in the Liverpool Museum (p. 103).
The systematic zoology of the ancients was lacking in the precision
of modern times ; and there are reasons for supposing that the antelope
and gazelle could exchange places the one with the other in their divine
roles ; the deer and the rabbit were also their surrogates. In India a
spotted rabbit can take the place of the antelope in playing the part of
what we call " the man in the moon ". This interpretation is common,
not only in India, but also in China, and is repeatedly found in the
ancient Mexican codices (Seler, op. citl). In the spread of the ideas
we have just been considering h'om Babylonia towards the north we find
that the deer takes the place of the antelope.
In view of the close resemblance between the Indian god Soma
and the Phrygian Dionysus, which has been demonstrated by Miss
Gladys Davis, it is of interest to note that in the service of the Greek
god a man was disguised as a stag, slain and eaten.^
Artemis also, one of the many avatai's of the Great Mother, who
was also related to the moon, was closely associated with the deer.
I have already referred to the fact that in Africa the dragon role
of the female antelope may be assumed by the cow or buffalo. In the
case of the gods Soma and Dionysus their association with the antelope
or deer may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis {pp. cHl) states
that in the Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over v/hich
the god presides is spoken of as " leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades :
" Mazda brought to thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit- fashioned
girdle (the belt of Orion) leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull- Dionysus
^ A. B. Cook, " Zeus," vol. i., p. 674.
134 THE EVOLUnON OF THE DRAGON
was especially associated with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in
classical mythology — which form part of the sign Taurus." The bull
is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma. The belt of the thunder-god
Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion of these Babylonian ideas as
far as Northern Europe.
The Ram.
The close association of the ram with the thunder-god is probably
related with the fact that the sun-god Amon in Egypt was represented
by the ram with a distinctive spiral horn. This spiral became a dis-
tinctive feature of the god of thunder throughout the Hellenic and
Phoenician worlds and in those parts of Africa which were affected
by their influence or directly by Egypt.
An account of the widespread influence of the ram-headed god
of thunder in the Soudan and West Africa has been given by Fro-
benius.^
But the ram also became associated with Agni, the Indian fire-
god, and the spiral as a head- appendage became the symbol of thunder
throughout China and Japan, and from Asia spread to America where
such deities as Tlaloc still retain this distinctive token of their origin
h-om the Old World.
In Europe this association of the ram and its spiral horn played
an even more obtrusive part.
The octopus as a surrogate of the Great Mother was primarily re-
sponsible for the development of the life-giving attributes of the spiral
motif. But the close connexion of the Great Mother with the dragon
and the thunder-weapon prepared the way for the special association
of the spiral with thunder, which was confirmed when the ram with its
spiral horn became the God of Thunder.
The Pig.
The relationship of the pig to the dragon is on the whole analogous
to that of the cow and the stag, for it can play either a beneficent or
a malevolent part. But the nature of the special circumstances which
gave the pig a peculiar notoriety as an unclean animal are so intimately
associated with the " Birth of Aphrodite" that I shall defer the dis-
cussion of them for my lecture on the history of the goddess.
1 Op. at., vo!. i., pp. 212-27.
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 133
Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.
Throughout the greater part of the area which tradition has peopled
with dragons, iron is regarded as peculiarly lethal to the monsters.
This seems to be due to the part played by the " smiths'* who forged
iron weapons with which Horus overcame Set and his followers,' or in
the earlier versions of the legend the metal weapons by means of which
the people of Upper Egypt secured their historic victory over the
Lower Egyptians. But the association of meteoric iron with the
thunderbolt, the traditional weapon for destroying dragons, gave added
force to the ancient legend and made it peculiarly apt as an incident m
the story.
But though the dragon is afraid of iron, he likes precious gems and
k'ung-ts'iHg ("The Stone of Darkness") and is fond of roasted
swallows.
The partiality of dragons for swallows v/as due to the transmission
of a very ancient story of the Great Mother, who in the form of Isis
was identified wdth the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster
for this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid
crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should
devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those
who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even
in England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain
— a tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of the same
ancient legend.
"The beautiful gems remind us of the Indian dragons ; the pearls
of the sea were, of course, in India as well as China and Japan, con-
sidered to be in the special possession of the dragon-shaped sea-gods '
(de Visser, p. 69). The cultural drift from West to East along the
southern coast of India was effected mainly by sailors who were search-
ing for pearls. Sharks constituted the special dangers the divers had to
incur in exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life'.
But at the time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the
Indian Ocean the people dwelling in the neig'tibourhood of the chief
pearl-beds regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues
and the god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The
sharks therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and
' Budge, " Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.
136 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
they were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving
pearls at the bottom of the sea,
I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of
the beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they under-
went in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere ;
but in my lecture upon " the Birth of Aphrodite " I shall have occasion
to refer to its spread to the West and explain how the shark's role was
transferred to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean, The dog-fish
then assumed a terrestrial form and became simply the dog who
plays such a strange part in the magical ceremony of digging up the
mandrake.
At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian
of the stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified
with the Naga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast
treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon
to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place
in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia.
Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as
a reserve of life-giving substance.
Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention ' to the remarkable
influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar
Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his
lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-
slaying heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their
fingers in their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the
statement that the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.
The Ethical Aspect.
So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the pro-
blems of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive
anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this pro-
cess of development a moral and ethical aspect of the dragon s character
was also emerging.
Now that we have realized the fact of the dragon's homology with
the moon-god it is important to remember that one of the primary
functions of this deity, which later became specialized in the Egyptian
^ " Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 et seq.
Fig. i6.— The God ok Thunder
(From a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the John Rylands Library)
Fig. 17. — From Joannes de Tukkecremata's "Meditationes sel-
CoNTEMPLATiONES ". Roiiic ; UlHch Hall, 1467
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 137
god Thoth, was the measuring of time and the keeping of records.
The moon, in fact, was the controller of accuracy, of truth, and order,
and therefore the enemy of falsehood and chaos. The identification
of the moon with Osiris, who fiom a dead king eventually developed
into a king of the dead, conferred upon the great Father of Waters the
power to exact from men respect for truth and order. For even if at
first these ideas were only vaguely adumbrated and not expressed in
set phrases, it must have been an incentive to good discipline when men
remembered that the record-keeper and the guardian of law and order
was also the deity upon whose tender mercies they would have to rely
in the life after death. Set, the enemy of Osiris, who is the real proto-
type of the evil dragon, was the antithesis of the god of justice : he was
the father of falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the proto-
type of Satan, as Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity
of which any record has been preserved.
The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the
devil.'But it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities, his
bird-like features, his horns, his red colour, his wings and cloven hoofs,
and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive features ;
and horn time to tim.e in the history of past ages we catch glimpses of
the reality of these identifications. In one of the earliest woodcuts
(PI. VI.) found in a printed book Satan is depicted as a monk with
the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate phase
is seen in a Chinese water-colour in the John Rylands Library, in
which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly re-
producing that of the devil of European tradition (PI. VI 1.).
Early in the Christian era, when ancient beliefs in Egypt became
disguised under a thin veneer of Christianity, the story of the conflict
between Horus and Set was converted into a conflict between Christ
and Satan. M. Clermont-Ganneau has described an interesting bas-
relief in the Louvre in which a hawk-headed St. George, clad in
Roman military uniform and mounted on a horse, is slaying a dragon
which is represented by Set's crocodile. But the Biblical references
to Satan leave no doubt as to his identity with the dragon, who is
^ " Horus at St. George d'apres un bas-relief inedit du Louvre," Revue
Archcologique, Nouvelle Serie, t. xxxii., 1876, p. 196, pi. xviii. It is right
to explain that M. Clermont-Ganneau's interpretation of this relief has not
been accepted by all scholars.
138 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
specifically mentioned in the Book of Revelations as " the old serpent,
which is the Devil and Satan " (xx. 2).
The devil Set was symbolic of disorder and darkness, while the
god Osiris was the maintainer of order and the giver of light. Although
the moon-god, in the form of Osiris, Thoth and other deities, thur
came to acquire the moral attributes of a just judge, who regulated the
movements of the celestial bodies, controlled the waters upon the earth,
and was responsible for the maintenance of order in the Universe, the
ethical aspect of his functions was in large measure disguised by the
material importance of his duties. In Babylonia similar views were
held with respect to the beneficent water-god Ea, who was the giver
of civilization, order and justice, and Sin, the moon-god, who " had
attained a high position in the Babylonian pantheon," as "the guide
of the stars and the planets, the overseer of the world at night".
" From that conception a god of high moral character soon developed."
"He is an extremely beneficent deity, he is a king, he is the ruler of
men, he produces order and stability, like Shamash and like the Indian
Varuna and Mitra, but besides that, he is also a judge, he loosens the
bonds of the imprisoned, like Varuna. His light, hke that of Varuna,
is the symbol of righteousness. . . . Like the Indian Varuna and the
Iranian Mazdah, he is a god of wisdom.'*
When these Egyptian and Babylonian ideas were borrowed by
the Aryans, and the Iranian Mazdah and the Indian Varuna assumed
the role of the beneficent deity of the former more ancient civilizations,
the material aspect of the functions of the moon-god became less ob-
trusive ; and there gradually emerged the conception, to which Zara-
thushtra first gave concrete expression, of the beneficent god Ahura
Mazdah as "an omniscient protector of morality and creator of mar-
vellous power and knowledge ". " He is the most-knowing one, and
the most-seeing one. No one can deceive him. He watches v/ith
radiant eyes everything that is done in open or in secret." " Although
he has a strong personality he has no anthropomorphic features." He
has shed the material aspects which loomed so large in his Egyptian,
Babylonian and earlier Aryan prototypes, and a more ethereal concep-
tion of a God of the highest ethical qualities has emerged.
The whole of this process of transformation has been described with
deep insight and lucid exposition by Professor Cumont, from whose im-
DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 139
portant and convincing memoir I have quoted so freely in the foregoing
paragraphs/
The creation of a beneficent Deity of such moral i grandeur in-
evitably emphasized the baseness and the malevolence of the " Power
of Evil . No longer are the gods merely glorified human beings vv^ho
can work good or evil as they will ; but there is now an all-powerful
God controlling the morals of the universe, and in opposition to Him
" the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan ".
' Albert J. Carney, " The Moral Deities of Iran and India and their
Origins," The American foiirnal of Theology, vol. xxi., No. 1, Jan. 1917,
p. 58.
Chapter IH.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITES
IT may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of
the stoiy of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters
of this book, in which frequent references have been made to
the early history of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a
part she played in the development of the dragon. The earliest real
dragon was Tiamat, one of the forms assumed by the Great Mother ;
and an even earlier prototype was the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation
of Hathor.
Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been
done in the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great
Mother's birth and development, and to investigate certain aspects of
her ontogeny to which only scant attention has been paid in the pre-
ceding pages.
Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast
legion of Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her
high specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love re-
tains in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most
primitive associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures
in biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of Aphro-
dite's own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the whole
family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For
Aphrodite's connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances
which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not
only the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of
all deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human
inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general
aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother :
^ An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library, on
14 November, 1917.
140
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 141
but I have used Aphrodite's name in the title because her shell-
associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than those
of any of her sisters.
In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon
the problems of Aphrodite's origin ; but this effort has, for the most
part, been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of ade-
quate appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history.
In the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression
in the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to
primitive man's psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of
life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance
of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of obtain-
ing any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars, who
have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped catch-
phrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of
classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather
aimless game.
It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this
statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical
archaeology, such as Roscher's " Lexikon," will testify to the truth of
my accusation. In her " Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Re-
ligion " Miss Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to " The Making
of a Goddess," and discusses " The Birth of Aphrodite ". But she
strictly observes the traditions of the classical method ; and assumes
that the meaning of the myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea — the
germs of which are at least fifty centuries old — can be decided by the
omission of any representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot
made in the fifth century B.C. !
But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness
and open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected
classical scholars from the tiue path. In the search for the ancestry
of Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively
upon the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the
most ancient of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with
whom (as Sir Arthur Evans ^ clearly demonstrated more than fifteen
years ago) the Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with
^ " Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 52. Compare also A. E.
W. Budge, " The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 435.
142 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
any of her Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or
Egyptian side, has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really
investigate the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and
Hathor, and the history of the development of their respective speciali-
zations of functions,^
But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing
to invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite " with a
mind undebauched by classical learning ". I have already explained
how the study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with
the problems of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the
enquiry two circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphro-
dite. Mr. Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the
cultural uses of shells, which he has since incorporated in a book."
As the results of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that
' With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans's " Mycenaean Tree
and Pillar Cult," Mr. H. R. Hall makes the following remarks in his
" /Egean Archaeology " (p. 150) : " The origin of the goddess Aphrodite
has long been taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that
she was Semitic, and came to Greece from Phoenicia or Cyprus. But the
new discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the melting-
pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see her,
naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycenaean
shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, ScJilieniann, Figs. 180, 181), which must be as
old as the First Late Minoan period {c. 1600-1500 B.C.), and — not rising
from the foam, but sailing over it — in a boat, naked, on the lost gold ring
from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only a Canaanitish-Syrian
goddess, but was common to all the people of the Levant. She is Aphro-
dite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan, Atargatis in Syria,
Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt ; what the Minoans called her we do
not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must take her place by the side
of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon."
It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess
is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in her
crescent moon.
The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is
of special interest in view of Highnard's attempt (" Le Mythe de Venus,"
Aimales du Mtisce Gniinet, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of
" la deesse a la colombe " from the Chaldean and Phoenician phrit or phriit
meaning '* a dove ".
Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia,
Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact, every
part of the world that harbours goddesses.
' " Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture."
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 143
the original Great Mother was nothing more than a cowiy-shell used
as a life-giving amulet ; and that Aphrodite's shell- associations were
a survival of the earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At
this psychological moment Dr. Rendel Harris ^ claimed that Aphro-
dite was a personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes
or the mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for con-
verting the amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which
Jackson's investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons
for deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly
a surrogate of the shell or vice versa.-' The problem to be solved was
to decide which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of
life-giving. The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus ;
the mandrake was a magical plant there ; and the cowry is so intim-
ately associated with the island as to be called Cyprc^a. So far as is
known, however, the shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the
magical reputation of the plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry
v,as regarded as feminine and accredited with life-giving attributes.
There are no such reasons for assigning life-giving powers or the
female sex to the mandrake. The claim that its magical properties are
due to the fancied resemblance of its root to a human being is wholly
untenable. The roots of many plants are at least as manlike ; and,
even if this character was the exclusive property of the mandrake, how
does it help to explain the remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and
fantastic properties and the female sex assigned to the plant ? Sir
James Frazer's claim ^ that " such beliefs and practices illustrate the
primitive tendency to personify nature " is a giatuitous and quite ir-
relevant assumption, which offers no explanation whatsoever of the
specific and arbitrary nature of the form assumed by the personification.
But when we investigate the historical development of the peculiar
^ " The Ascent of Olympus."
- A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is really a surro-
gate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern Greece of using the
mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way (and for the same magi-
cal purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of East Africa use the cowry
(in a leather bag) at the present time.
* Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he " never could perceive
shape of man or woman " (quoted! by Rendel Harris, op. cit., p, 1 10).
^ " Jacob and the Mandrakes," Procecdhigs of the British Acadejiiv,
Vol. VIII. p. 22.
144 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
attributes oi the cowry- shell, and appreciate why and how they were
acquired, any doubt as to the source from which the mandrake ob-
tained its " magic " is removed ; and with it the fallacy of Sir James
Frazer's wholly unwarranted claims is also exposed.
If we ignore Sir James Frazer's naive speculations we can make
use of the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remark-
able assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the
remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in
this room ' during the last few years. Our genial friend has been
cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,' and has been pluck-
ing the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the
same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been
burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information
concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before
Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.
In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more sur-
prised than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots
of the same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gather-
ing from his Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective
points of view was perhaps responsible for the different appearance
the growths assumed.
To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of
the deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was find-
ing their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty cen-
turies before the commencement of his story. For the gods and
goddesses of his narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives
of much more ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments
of Greek culture.
In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the
goddess was a personification of the mandrake ; and I think he made
out a good prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars
have set forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the
argonaut, the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both
univalves and bivalves.
The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water,
' The John Rylands Library. - '^ " The Ascent of Olympus."
^ See the memoirs by Tiimpel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to which
reference is made elsewhere in these pages.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 145
the ocean, or its foam.' Then again she is closely linked with pigs,
cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures,
not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the
goose, and the swan,"
The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recog-
nition to, any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest
why it is so dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he
identifies with the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assist-
ance of a dog ^ in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable
gives an important clue to Aphrodite's antecedents.
The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.
In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we can-
not fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout
the whole of his career, man (of the species sapiens) has been seeking *
for an elixir of life, to give added " vitality " to the dead (whose ex-
istence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the days of
active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his own life
from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of circumstance. In
other words, the elixir he sought was something that would bring
'* good luck " in all the events of his life and its continuation. Most
of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky trinkets, the averters
of the " Evil Eye," the practices and devices for securing good luck
in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental distress, in attaining
material prosperity, or a continuation of existence after death, are sur-
vivals of this ancient and persistent striving after those objects which
our earliest forefathers called collectively the " givers of life ".
From statements in the earliest literature ' that has come down to
us from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among
' The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesicd's theogony.
■ See the article " Aphrodite " in Roscher's " Lexikon '*.
^ Sir James Frazer's claim that the incident of the ass in a late Jewish
story of Jacob and the mandrakes {pp. at., p. 20) "helps us to understand
the function of the dog," is quite unsupported. The learned guardian of
the Golden Bough does not explain hoiv it helps us to understand.
* In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of all instincts, that
of the preservation of life.
•' See Alan Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archceology, Vol. IV,
Parts II-lII, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian story
of Gilgamesh.
lO
146 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear that
originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in immortality.
It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern
psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the unpleasant
idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive man
refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life coming to
an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread of such
physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously
avoided thinking of the chance of his own death : hence his belief in
the continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active
process of constructive thought.
This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.
How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of
death, if he instinctively refused to admit its possibility ? How did
he escape the inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he
might have been supposed to make from other men's experience and
recognize that he must die ?
Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another
man by inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he
seems to have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon
himself, his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur
and the onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among
certain relatively primitive people to search for the man who has in-
flicted death on his fellow.
It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could
fail to recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases.
The mere fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of dif-
ference between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the
tacit assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious
changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure
necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike
that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful
and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did be-
fore, and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was depend-
ent upon his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.
Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people,
once they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the
grave ; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 147
existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed,
that so long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there
were restored to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at
death, the continuance of existence was theoretically possible and
worthy of acceptance as an article of faith.
Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements
of vitality by the earliest members of our species.'
From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the
fact that he could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain
physical injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of
blood. The loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death.
Blood, therefore, must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the
material whose escape from the body could bring life to an end.-
The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present
acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in
Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest
known representatives of our own species, Homo sapiens^ in the phase
of culture now distinguished by the name " Aurignacian ".
The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.'
In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal's flank
near the region of the heart ; and in others the heart itself is represented.
This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species,
it was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the
heart was. But even long before man began to speculate about the
functions of the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of
blood on the part of man or animals with death, and to regard the
pouring out of blood as the escape of its vitaUty. Many factors must
have contributed to the new advance in physiology which made the
heart the centre or the chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and
knowledge.
Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting,
of the peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the
knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in
' Some of these have been discussed in Chapter I (" Incense and Liba-
tions ") and will not be further considered here.
' " The life which is the blood thereof " (Gen. ix. 4).
" See, for example, Sollas, " Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, 1915. pp.
326 (Hg. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).
148 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and
consciousness.
The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the
influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist vv^ith
the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation of
his earlier ideas of its functions.
But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of
even the most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally
regarded as the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that
the blood was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves
of Western Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.
The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were
such ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain
cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The
remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off p&it of a finger
seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times. ^
If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early
people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the
ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the
present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive
underlying this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as cir-
cumcision, piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and
body, et cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.
Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death
was due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational pro-
cedure to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness
and life to the dead.^ If the blood was seriously believed to be the
vehicle of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering
of blood to the community was a reasonable method for initiating any-
one into the wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.
Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of cere-
monies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a therapeutic ^ and,
later, of a religious significance.
^ Sollas, op. cit., pp. 347 et seq.
^The "redeeming blood," ^apjxaKov aOavatria'i,
^ The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes was probably
first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of blood-letting was
a means of healing ; and the victim himself supplied the vitalizing fluid !
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 149
But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been
admitted that substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar
potency.
The extensive use of red ochre or other red mateiials for packing
around the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea
that materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the
same life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground
in similar vitalizing ceremonies.
As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering
of blood or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of
restoring consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which
was diminished or lost in the corpse.
The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically
irrational child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well
endowed mentally as his modern successors ; and was as logical and
rational as they are ; but many of his premises were wrong, and he
hadn't the necessary body of accumulated wisdom to help him to
correct his false assumptions.
If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a
reduced vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the
people of the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre
(which they regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make
good the lack of vitality in the corpse.
If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the
exchange of blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing com-
munion of thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate
the traditions of his people.
If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets
or necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding
off danger to life and of securing good luck.
If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was
clearly justifiable to resort to its use.
All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were
erroneous.
The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible
for us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from
archaeological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper
amulet sometimes called the " girdle- tie of Isis," was supposed to re-
1.50 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
present the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy " to
stimulate the functions of his blood " ; ^ or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance,
which was so obviously lacking in the corpse.
The Cowry as a Giver of Life.
Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials
that had acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer
Epoch. For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells
also were regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.
If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death,
the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal
by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only
as the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.' The large
Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this " giver of life," then
came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers.
Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian :
it was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on
bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the " giver of
life " to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving
properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be assimilated
the one with the other.^
At first it was probably its more general power of averting death
or giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in
the magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the
' Davies and Gardiner, " The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 112.
~ As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian Pyramid
Texts there is a reference to a new being formed " by the vulva of
Tefnut" (Breasted).
" Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this correla-
tion of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than the similarity
of their use in burial ceremonies and for making necklaces and bracelets.
The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in women ceased during preg-
nancy seems to have given rise to the theory, that the new life of the child
wds actually formed from the blood thus retained. The beliefs that grew
up in explanation of the placenta form part of the system of interpretation
of these phenomena : for the placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted
blood (intimately related to the child which was supposed to be derived
from part of the same material) which harboured certain elements of the
child's mentality (because blood was the substance of consciousness).
I
Fig. i8. — (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing, perhaps,
THE earliest DESIGN OF HaTHOR (aT THE UPPER CORNERS OK THE PALETTe) AS
A WOMAN WITH COW'S HORNS AND EARS (COMPARE FLINDERS PeTRIE, " ThE RoYAL
Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part I, igoo, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The
PHARAOH is wearing A BELT FROM WHICH ARE SUSPENDED FOUR COW-HEADED
HaTHOR FIGURES IN PLACE OF THE COWRY-AMULETS OF MORE PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.
This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the func-
tions ORIGINALLY ATTRIBUTED TO THE COWRY-SHELL.
{b) The king's sporran, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the cowries
of the primitive girdle.
.'a
'' mmsr-ft
;'fi im
'iW^& ''■^
Fig. 19. — The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic representations of
THE Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the ancient Mava
monuments at Copan, Central America (after Maudslav's photograph and
diagram).
The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (Ol/ia or
CONUS) AND amulets REPRESENTING HUMAN FACES CORRESPONDING TO THE
HaTHOR-HEADS ON THE NaRMER PALETTE (FiG. I8).
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 151
development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred
upon the cowry special power over women. It was the suiTogate of
the life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of
women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by
girls suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the
organ it was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed
to be able to reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces
of carnelian were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of
blood, which it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imita-
tions of them made of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, neck-
laces, or hair- ornaments, to confer health and good luck in both sexes.
But these ideas received a much further extension.
As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by
some people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet
to increase fertility : it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the
creator of all living things ; and the next step was to give these mater-
nal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an actual
woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine characters
grossly exaggerated ; ^ and in the domain of belief to create the image
of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.
Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the con-
ception of a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This
Great Mother, at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably
the first deity that the wit of man devised to console him with her
watchful care over his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as
to his fate in the future.
At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs
had taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated
as to the physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was
practised.
Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable
fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing powers
of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god Obiris
in his own image.
Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual
^ See S. Reinach, " Les Deesses Nues dans I'Art Oriental et dans I'Art
Grec," Revue Anhrol., T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the
figurines of the so-called Upper Palaeolithic Period in Europe.
152 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
interest in the sun, the mooji, and the stars. He had not yet devised
a sky-world nor created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have
already discussed,^ the theory of the fertilizing and the animating
power of water was formulated, the beliefs concerning this element
were assimilated with those which many ages previously had grown
up in explanation of the potency of blood and shells. In addition to
fertilizing the earth, water could also animate the dead. The rivers
and the seas were in fact a vast reservoir of this animating substance.
The powers of the cowry, as a product of the sea, were rationalized
into an expression of the great creative force of the water.
A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman.
Such symboHsm implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle
into which the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being
emerged in a flood of amniotic fluid.
The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice,
for cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called
" Upper PalaeoHthic Age " of Southern Europe,
At Laugerie- Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowiies were found
arranged in pairs upon the body ; two pairs on the forehead, one near
each arm, four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon
each foot. Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are
peculiarly important, because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton
with which they were associated, was found part of a Cassis rufa^
a shell whose habitat does not extend any nearer than the Indian
Ocean.'^
These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the
great antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, pre-
sumably for the purpose of " life-giving ". Secondly, they suggest the
possibility that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient
than their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,
the association of these practices with the use of the shell Cassis rufa
indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living upon
the North- Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age
and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean ; and the proba-
^ Chapter I.
' The literature relating to these important discoveries has been sum-
marized by Wilfrid Jackson in his " Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of
Early Culture," pp. 135-7.
Fig. 20. — Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in (a) East
Africa and (b) Oceania respectively.
(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharat
Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and what seem
TO be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.
(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of deities
are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between the
heads recall Hathor's sistra.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 153
bility that these special uses of shells by the former were inspired by
the latter.
This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear
view of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediter-
ranean many centuries later/ For then we find definite indications
that the cultural uses of shells were obviously bon'owed from the
Erythraean area.
Long before the shell- amulet became personified as a woman the
Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowiy's
ability to give life and birth.
The Origin of Clothing.
The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to con-
fer fertility on maidens ; and it became the practice for growing girls
to wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to
the organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many
peoples " this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached ma-
turity.
This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of
clothing ; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.
It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the
reason for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.'^
This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means
the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who
have never worn clothes.
Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the
wearing of clothing might add to an individual's allurement and en-
hance her sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have
been responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this em-
pirical knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle {a) as a protection
against danger to life, and (/^) as a means of conferring fecundity on
^ Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain (Siret,
o/>. cit., p. 18).
^ See Jackson, op. cit., pp. 139 et seq.
^ For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on " The Psychology
of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's " Sex and Society,"
Chicago, 1907 ; also S. Reinach, " Cults, Myths, and Religions," p. I 77 ;
and Paton, " The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," Kevue Arckeol.,
SerielV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.
154 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
girls ^ provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that
the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was
originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly in-
tensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.
Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern
Arabia) in which it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn them-
selves with a girdle, it is easy to understand how the meaning of the
practice underwent a change, and developed into a device for enhanc-
ing their charms and stimulating the imaginations of theii* suitors.
Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle
as an allurement and a love- provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphro-
dite's girdle acquired the reputation of being able to co?npel love.
When Ishtar removed her girdle in the under- world reproduction ceased
in the world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle.
In fact magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part
of the world by means of a cestus of some sort." But the outstanding
^ It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used by both sexes
for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the funerary ritual of both
sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the dead, to attain success in
hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well as in games. Thus men also
at times wore shells upon their belts or aprons, and upon their implements
and fishing nets, and adorned their trophies of war and the chase with them.
Such customs are found in all the continents of the Old World and also in
America, as, for example, in the girdles of Conns- and C'//T'<;^-shells worn
by the figures sculptured upon the Copan stelae. See, for example^
Maudslay's pictures of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana ;
Archaeology) inter alia. But they were much more widely used by
women, not merely by maidens, but also by brides and married women, to
heighten their fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to en-
sure safe delivery in child-birth. It was their wider employment by women
that gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.
' Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American
sculptures : in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and the
Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and Egyptian parallels
see Moret, " Mysteres Egyptiens," p. 91, especially note 3. The magic
girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number of surrogates of the
cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis was worn in the
girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 91) : the people of
Zante use vervain in the same way ; the people of France (Creuse et Cor-
reres) rye-stalks ; Eve's fig-leaves ; in Vedic India the initiate wore the
" cincture of Munga's herbs " ; and Kali had her girdle of hands. Breasted,
(" Religion and 1 bought in Ancient Egypt," p. 29) says : " In the oldest
fragments we hear of Isis the great, -who fastened on the girdle in Khemmis,
when she brought her Icenserl and burned incense before her son Horus ",
THE BIRTH Ox^ APHRODITE
155
feature of Aphrodite's character as a goddess of love is intimately
bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing
of a girdle of cowries.
In the Biblical naiTative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the for-
bidden fruit, " the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked ; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves aprons," or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles".
The girdle of fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the
Fig. 4. — Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh).
(a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet form) : she is
wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the cows horns, conventionalized
so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her hair is represented in the conventional form
which is sometimes used as Hathor's symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus,
which again are merely forms of the goddess herself.
{b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher's " Lexikon ") holding the papyrus
sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the mother-goddess herself and
as such a thunder weapon.
girdle of cowries : it was an amulet to give fertility. The conscious-
ness of nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as t/ie restdt
of the wealing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they de-
veloped), and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote
ancestors to clothe themselves.
The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting
connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the man-
drake for similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and
in Cyprus and Syria respectively {vide injVd).
In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical
156 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant
and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles ; while
married women fix basil upon their heads. ^ It is believed that the
odour of the plant will attract admirers : hence in Italy it is called
Bacia-nico/a, " Kiss me, Nicholas "."
In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-pro-
longing attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the
dead, have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.
On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people re-
mark, " St. Basil is come from Caesarea ".
Pearls.
During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes
of the original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were
also changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex
scheme. The magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired
by other Red Sea shells, such as Pterocera, the pearl oyster, conch
shells, and others. Each of these became intimately associated with
the moon.^ The pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little
moons, drops of the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky
into the gaping oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of
" shining by night," like the moon from which they were believed to
have come : and every surrogate of the Great Mother, whether plant,
animal, mineral or mythical instrument, came to be endowed with the
power of " shining by night ". But pearls were also regarded as the
quintessence of the shell's life-giving properties, which were considered
to be all the more potent because they were sky- given emanations of
the moon- goddess herself. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of
^ This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn on
the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or bracelet, is
very widespread. On the girdle it usually has the significance of stimulat-
ing the individual's fertility : worn elsewhere it was intended to ward off
danger to life, i.e. to give good luck. An interesting surrogate of Hathor's
distinctive emblem is the necklace of golden apples worn by a priestess of
Apollo (Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 42).
- De Gubernatis, " Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.
' For the details see Jackson, op. cit., pp. 57-69. Both the shells and
the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they were homo-
logized the one with the other.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 157
being the "givers of \\{t" par excellence, an idea which found literal
expression in the ancient Persian word margan (h-om nia7% "giver"
and gan, " life"). This word has been borrowed in all the Turanian
languages (ranging from Hungary to Kamskatckha), but also in the
non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and
Latin {tytiirgarita) to European languages/ The same life-giving
attributes were also acquired by the other pearl-bearing shells ; and
at some subsequent period, when it was discovered that some of these
shells could be used as trumpets, the sound produced was also believed
to be life-giving or the voice of the great Giver of Life, The blast of
the trumpet was also supposed to be able to animate the deity and re-
store his consciousness, so that he could attend to the appeals of sup-
plicants. In other words the noise woke up the god from his sleep.
Hence the shell- trumpet attained an important significance in early
religious ceremonials for the ritual purpose of summoning the deity,
especially in Crete and India, and ultimately in widely distant parts of
the world.- Long before these shells are known to have been used as
trumpets, they were employed like the other Red Sea shells as " givers
of life " to the dead in Egypt. Their use as trumpets was secondaiy.
And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained
from certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the
same life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the
trumpet and the pearls : thus it became regarded as a divine sub-
stance and as the exclusive property of gods and kings.
Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a
surrogate of life-giving blood ; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly
helped in the development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.
Sharks and Dragons.
When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the
same properties with which shells had independently been credited
^ Dr. Mingana has given me the following note : " It is very probable
that the Graeco-Latin margarita, the Aramaeo-Syriac tnargivita, the
Arabic margan, and the Turanian }iiargan are derived from the Persian
mar-gdn, meaning both ' pearl ' and ' life,' or etymologically ' giver,
owTier, or possessor, of life '. The word gan, in Zend van, is thoroughly
Persijin and is undoubtedly the original form of this expression."
'^ See Chapter II of Jackson's book, op. cit.
158 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
long before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of
the vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But
the same explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other
denizens of the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In
the lecture on " Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identifica-
tion of Ea, the Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the
value of the pearl as the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks
to obtain so precious an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened
pearl-fishers were due to sharks. These came to be regarded as
demons guarding the treasure-houses at the bottom of the sea. Out
of these crude materials the imaginations of the early pearl-fishers
created the picture of wonderful submarine palaces of Naga kings in
which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but also of gold, precious
stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them "givers of Hfe," vide infra,
p. 224), were placed under the protection of shark-dragons.^ The con-
ception of the pearl (which is a surrogate of the life-giving Great
Mother) guarded by dragons is linked by many bonds of affinity with
early Erythraean and Mediterranean beliefs. The more usual form of
the story, both in Southern Arabian legend and in Minoan and
Mycenaean art, represents the Mother Goddess incarnate in a sacred
tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the form of serpents or
lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either real animals, such as
deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig. 26).'
^ In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, " The Hisago-
Bune," Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval Architects,
p. 1 8, where the dragon is identified with the wani, which can be either a
crocodile or a shark) ; in Oceania (L. Frobenius, " Das Zeitalter des Son-
nengottes," Bd. I., 1904, and C E. Fox and F. H. Drew, "Beliefs and
Tales of San Cristoval," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140) ; and in America (see Thomas Gann, " Mounds in
Northern Honduras," Nineteejith Ajunnrl Report of the Bureau of American
Ethncdogw 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon assumes the form of a shark,
a crocodile, or a variety of other animals.
■'' Sir Arthur Evans, " Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," op. cit. supra :
W. Hayes Ward, " The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," op. cit. : and
Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133: "In Hadra-
mant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because the spirit
that resides in the plant will avenge the injury ". When men interfere with
the incense trees it is reported : " the demons of the place flew away with
doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and the intruders died soon
afterwards ".
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 159
There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented
somewhere on the shores of the Erythraean Sea, probably in Southern
Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for
the reasons which I have already expounded,' formed the link of her
identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical
reputation in the same region.
" In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing
in the lake Vourukasha : the fish Khar-mahi circles protectingly around
it and defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life,
children to women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the
Minokhired the tree is called ' the preparer of the corpse " (Spiegel,
" Eran. Altertumskunde," II, 115 -quoted by Jung, "Psychology
of the Unconscious," p. 532). The idea of guarding the divine tree "
by dragons was probably the result of the tiansference to that par-
ticular surrogate of the Great Mother of the shark-stories which origin-
ated from the experiences of the seekers after pearls, her other
representatives.
There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest
^ Vide supra, p. 38.
- In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of
life is also Identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, " Celtic
Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both
surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree
of Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was
only another form of herself. Her " sin " consisted in aspiring to attain the
immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This incident
is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals steal the avirita.
By Eve's sin " death came into the world " for the paradoxical reason that
she had eaten the food of the gods which gives immortality. The punish-
ment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to have been to inhibit the
life-giving and birth-faciHtating action of the fruit of immortality, so that she
and all her progeny were doomed to be mortal and to suffer the pangs of
child-bearing.
There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in
connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse of
the usual human way (Hopkins, " Religions of India," p. 201). So also an
act which gives immortaHty to the gods, brings death to man.
The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the
early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the gods.
The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal life upon
them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths this same
elixir brought death to man.
160 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
that these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually-
transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is
it surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that
Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid
Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region
to the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediter-
ranean area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-
forms of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a
garbled version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks
by sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less
modified form, and then underwent another kind of transformation
(and confusion with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.
As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the
Mediterranean, its role is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the
dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and
Mr. H. T. Riley ' refer to the habits of dog-fishes (" Canes marini "),
and quote from Procopius (" De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following
" wonderful story in relation to this subject ' : " Sea-dogs are wonder-
ful admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea. ... A
certain fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish
was deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, . . . seized
the shell -fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was
soon aware of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized
him. Finding himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw
the pearl-fish on shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces
by its protector." ^
Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the
incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.
It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a
shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.
For reasons which 1 shall discuss in the following pages, the role
of the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in
the Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen
the Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenaean
lands. Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became neces-
^Bohn's Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.
■ A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed sea-monster
(Mackenzie, op. cit., "Myths of Crete," p. 139).
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 161
sary, in adapting the legend, to substitute for the " sea-dog " some
land animal. Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of
the dangers incurred in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed
the well-known form.^ The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said
to be fraught with great danger. The traditional means of circum-
venting these risks has been described by many writers, ancient and
modern, and preserved in the folk-lore of most European and western
Asiatic countries. The story as told by Josephus is as follows :
" They dig a trench round it till the hidden part of the root is very
small, then they tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries hard to follow
him that tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies im-
mediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant
away ".' Thus the dog takes the place of the dog-fish when the
mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only discrepancy be-
tween the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls specific
attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the shark (dog-
fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim as a sub-
stitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, " the dog dies immediately,
as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant away ".
This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of legend-mak-
ing. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into a device
for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.
It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the
Great Mother may have played some part in this transference of
meaning, if only by creating confusion which made such rationalization
necessaiy. I refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to
collect the fragments of Osiris ; and the role played by Anubis, and
his Greek avatar Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the
association of the dog- star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do
with the confusion is uncertain.^
There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of
' A number of versions of this widespread fable have been collected
by Dr. Rendel Harris {pp. cit.) and Sir James Frazer {of', cit.). I quote
here from the former (p. 1 18).
- Josephus, " Bell. Jud.," VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel Harris, o/. cit.,
p. 118.
^ The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons which are ex-
plained on p. 209. It was " the opener of the way " for the birth of the sun
and the New Year.
II
162 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
the underworld (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead,^ Per-
haps the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphro-
dite's dog and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival
of the association of Isis w^ith Anubis, even if there is not a more
definite causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various
legends.
The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion
with the ritual of rebirth,'' where it is shown upon a standard
in association v\dth the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the
Egyptian word ines, " to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs
(or jackals, or foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded
the portal of Hades may possibly be a distorted survival of this
ancient symbolism of the three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for
the act of emergence from the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in
this lecture I have referred to Charon's obohis as a surrogate of the
life-giving pearl or cowry placed in the mouth of the dead to provide
" vital substance ". Rohde^ regards Charon as the second Cerberus,
corresponding to the Egyptian dog-faced god Anubis : just as Charon
received his oboitis, so in Attic custom the dead w^ere provided with
fteXtToOrta, the object of which is usually said to be to pacify the dog
of hell.
What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the
story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely
bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden
treasure.
The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these
two streams of legend — the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures
at the bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concern-
ing the dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations
and superintends the process of rebirth.
The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding
the goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the
gate at Mycenae heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents
in Southern Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and
^ When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and her deer be-
came her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new scheme.
" See, for example, Moret's '* Mysteres Egyptiens,"pp. 77-80.
■' " Psyche," p. 244.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 163
Serpent in these legends are all representatives of the goddess herself,
i.e. merely her own avatars (Fig. 26).
At one time I imagined that the role of Anubis as a god of em-
balming and the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device
on the part of the early Egyptians to console themselves for the de-
predations of jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were
converted into a life-giving god it Nvould be a comforting thought to
believe that the dead man, even though devoured, was " in the bosom /l^
of his god " and thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ^^ ^
ancient Persia corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There .
was also the custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who
presented him with food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by
Hercules in his journey to hell. But I have not been able to obtain
any corroboration of this supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence
that the Great Mother has been identified with the necrophilic vul-
ture as Mut ; and it has been claimed by some writers ^ that, just as
the jackal was regarded as a symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the
dead were exposed for dogs to devour in Persia, so the vulture's
corpse- devouring habits may have been primarily responsible for sug-
gesting its identification with the Great Mother and for the motive
behind the Indian practice of leaving the corpses of the dead for the
vultures to dispose of.' It is not uncommon to find, even in English
cathedrals, recumbent statues of bishops with dogs as footstools.
Petronius (" Sat.," c. 71) makes the following statement : " valde te
rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae catellam pingas — ut mihi
contingat tuo beneficio post mortem vivere "." The belief in the dog's
service as a guide to the dead ranges from Western Europe to Peru.
To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake : no doubt
the demand will be made for further evidence that the mandrake
actually assumed the role of the pearl in these stories. If the remark-
See, for example, Jung, oP. cit., p. 268.
- Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by the Greeks
with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, " Religion of the Ancient
Egyptians," p. 141). She was usually represented as a vulture hovering
over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of Horus or in the
Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian Mahabharata the
Garuda is described as " the bird of life . . . destroyer of all, creator of
all".
''Quoted by Jung, op. cit., p. 530.
164 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
able repertory of magical properties assigned to the mandrake be
compared with those which developed in connexion with the cowry
and the pearl," it will be found that the two series are identical. The
mandrake also is the giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in
childbirth ; and like the covsnry and the pearl it exerts these magical
influences only if it be worn in contact Math the wearer's skin.^ But
the most definite indication of the mandrake's homology wdth the pearl
is provided by the legend that " it shines by night ". Some scholars,*
both ancient and modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition
by interpreting it as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the
plant ! But it is only one of many attributes borrowed by the man-
drake from the pearl, which was credited v^th this remarkable reputa-
tion only when early scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem
was a bit of moon substance.
As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, con-
fusion was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already ex-
plained how the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace
of treasures under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the
pearl had the reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it
or some of its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited
wHith the power of " revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which
in the original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic
fern- seed and other treasure-disclosing vegetables ' are surrogates of
the mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or
indirectly from the pearl.
^ See Rendel Harris (op. cit.) and Sir James Frazer [op. at.).
^ Jackson, op. cit.
^ An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T. H. Pear has kindly
reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive amongst British
women. It is maintained that pearls " lose their lustre " unless they are
worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure myth, but also an
illuminating survival.
^ See Frazer, op. cit., p. 16, especially the references to the "devil's
candle " and " the lamp of the elves ".
'' Rendel Harris, op. cit. , p. 113: Other factors played a part in the
development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses. Both Artemis
and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of opening locks
and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of the portal and
her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is found appropriately
placed above the lintel of doors.
1
Fig. 21. — (a) A slate tkiad i-ound hy Fkokkssok G. A. Keisnkk i.n thk temi'lii
oi- THE Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Phakaoh Mycerinus sup-
ported ON his right side by the goddess Hathor, represented as a woman
with the moon and the cow's horns upon her head, and on the left side
BY A NOME goddess, BEARING UPON HER HEAD THE JACKAL-SYMBOL OK HER NOME.
{[)) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after Saville,
" Antiquities OF Manabi, Ecuador." Preliminary Report, 1907, Plate XXXVUI).
A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare
Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a conven-
tionalized Octopus, whose body is a Loligo, and whose limbs are human.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 165
The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most
definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the
shell-cults of the Erythraean Sea. There are many other scraps of
evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.
" The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the
Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many
writers. According to Julius Pollux (' Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and
Nonnus (' Dionys./ XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on
the seashore accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom
he was enamoured. The dog having found a Murex with its head
protruding from its shell, devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained
with purple. The nymph, on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained
with Hercules to provide her with a robe of like splendour." ^ This
seems to be another Vcuiant of the same story.
The Octopus.
Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and
the mandrake, but also w^th the octopus, the argonaut, and other
cephalopods. Tiimpel seems to imagine that the identification of the
goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her
association with molluscs ; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally
exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of
argument due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the
history of primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great
generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They
were searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to
include, most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme.
The very essence of such attempts was the institution of a series of
homologies and fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphro-
dite was at one and the same time the personification of the cowry,
the conch shell, the purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the
mandrake and the bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus
and the argonaut, the pig, and the cow.
Every one or these identifications is the result of a long and
chequered history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of
meaning play a very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate
the claim m.ade by Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so
^ Jackson, op. at., p. 195.
166 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
many evidences of the innate human tendency to personify nature.
The history of the arbitrary circumstances that were responsible for the
development of each one of these homologies is entirely fatal to this
wholly unwananted speculation.^ Tiimpel claims " the Aphrodite
was associated more especially with '* a species of Sepia ". He refers
to the attempts to associate the goddess of love with amulets of uni-
valvular shells " in virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbol-
ism ".^ Naturalists, however, designate with the term Venus Cythcira
certain gaping bivalve molluscs.
But, according to Tiimpel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve
shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess's cultural equip-
ment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell from
across the sea.* The truly sacred Aphrodite- shell was entirely different,
so Tiimpel believes : it was obviously difficult to preserve, but for
that reason more worthy of notice, for the small yoiplvai (pectines),
virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and in reference thereto,
Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria (o-TTopta) were only the commoner
and more readily obtained surrogates : the univalvular shells
^ Sir James Frazer, " Jacob and the Mandrakes," Proc. Brit. Academy.
~ K. Tiimpel, " Die ' Muschel der Aphrodite,' " Philologiis, Zeitschrift
fiir das Clnssische Altenhian, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare also, with
reference to the " Muschel der Aphrodite," O. Jahn, SB. d. k. Sachs.
G. d. W., VII. 1853, p. 16 ff. ; also IX, 1855, p. 80 ; and Stephani, Compe
rendu pour Van 1870-71, p. 1 7 ff .
^ See Jahn, op. cit., 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 6 : figures of the so-called
Xoipivai (from Xolpo<; in the double sense as " pig " and " the female
pudendum ") : Aristophanes, Eq. 1 147 ; Vesp. 332 ; Pollux, 8, 16 ; Hesch.
s.v.
* The fact that no graphic representation of this event has been found
is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit the story. Very
few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received concrete expression
in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A Hellenistic representation
of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was found in Southern Russia
(Minns, " Scythians and Greeks," p. 345).
Tiimpel cites the following statements : " te (Venus) ex concha natam
esse autumant : cave tu harum conchas spernas!" Tibull. 3, 3, 24: " et
faveas concha, Cypria, vecta tua ' ; Statius Silv. 1 , 2, 117: Venus to
Violentilla, "haec et caeruleis mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et nostra
potuit considere concha ' ; Fulgent, myth. 2, 4 " concha etiam mariua
pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS : — am portare) " ; Paulus Diacon. p. 52,
" M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quarn primum devecta esse
dicitur concha, cum in man esset concepta cet '.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 167
{ixopoOvpa of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the
other ocTTpea of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the purple
shell and the Echineis were also real X^eneriae conchae. Among the
Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): 'A(f)poSiTr)u 8e crvi^St-
aiTOifxeuTiV iv r^ OaXaTTrj -qcrdrjvai, re t(Z NyjpLTr) TwSe /cat €)(€ii'
dvTov (fiikou. On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases
of abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the
'My^eurjU (pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called (hSivokyTrj ' (Pliny, 32,
i, 5: pisciculus !). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25 (41),
79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true Murex
pnrpii7'a. From this the sanctity of the Echineis to the Cnidian
Aphrodite is demonstrated : " quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam
ventis stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros,
conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli"
(Pliny).
Tiimpel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his
interpretation of Martial's Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, I = purple
shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given
the correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33
[52], 103, compare 32, 1 1 [53]) : " navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae,
praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa
aequorum velificant " ; and further (9, 30 [49], 94) : "in Propontide
concham esse acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in
hac condi nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus
hoc fieri geneiibus : tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire
ut remis ; si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi
pandique buccarum sinus aurae ".
Tiimpel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the
question. Aphrodite's *' shell," according to him, is the Na^iplius
(depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulae spread out to the
wind, but wdth the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for steering),
clearly " a species of Sepia" wholly like Aphrodite herself, a ship-
like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water, the concha veneria.
[The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is extremely ancient
and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying the moon-goddess
across the heavenly ocean.]
^ From oihivo — "to have the pains of childbirth '*.
166 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of
Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of
zoologists.
But if Jahn and Tiimpel have thus clearly established the proof of
the intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they
are wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from
relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close
(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the
pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.
It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primi-
tive shell-cults of the Erythraean Sea had been diffused throughout
the Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the
shores of the Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence
in the south. The use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry
goes back to an early time in /Egean history.^ And the influence of
Aphrodite's early associations had become blurred and confused by the
development of new links with other shells and theii surrogates.
But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred
played a veiy obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenaean art ; and its
influence was spread abroad as far as Western Europe' and towards
the East as far as America. In many ways it was a factor in the
development of such artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and
not improbably also of the swastika.
Starting from the researches of Tiimpel, a distinguished French
zoologist. Dr. Frederic Houssay,^ sought to demonstrate that the cult
of Aphrodite was " based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy ".
The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a personifica-
tion of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two parts :
first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the goddess, of
which there can be no doubt ; and secondly, his explanation of it,
which (however popular it may be with classical writers and modern
scholars) ^ is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also, even if it were
^ See Schliemann, " llios," p. 435 ; and Siret, op. cit.
- Siret, op. cit. supra, p. 59.
" " Les Theories de la Genese a Mycenes et le sens zoologique de
certains symboles du culte d' Aphrodite," Revue Archeologique, 3'« serie,
T. XXVI. 1895, p. 13.
^ It was adduced also by Tiimpel and others before him.
i
:l
e
P'lG. 22. — (a) Sepia oFF/ci.VALfS, ai-tek Tryon, " Ckphalopoda".
(b) LOLIGO VULGARIS, AFTER TrYON.
(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after Trvon.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 169
based upon more valid evidence than the speculations of such recent
writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation veiy far.
I refer to his claim that " les premiers conquerants de la mer furent
induits en veneration du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent
que quelque-uns de ces cephalopodes, les poulpes sacres (argonauta)
avciient, comme eux et avant eux, invente la navigation " {pp. cit.,
p. I 5). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the arbi-
traiy beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.
The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all
the multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean
Sea, the octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for
distinctive appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attri-
butes as the cowry.
I believe that the Red Sea " Spider shell," Pterocej'a^ was the
link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like
the cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.'
But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues
of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1 893-4
by Professor Flinders Petrie."^ Some of these objects are now in
the Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Ox-
ford. They are supposed to be late predynastic representations of the
god Min. If this supposition is correct they are the earliest idols
(apart from mere amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.
Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell Pterocera
bryonia are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. LI. Griffith is disinclined
to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of the shell
was to animate the statues. But whether this was theii" purpose or
not, it is probably not without some significance that these life-giving
shells were associated with so obtrusively phalHc a deity as Min. In
any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact between
Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular shells
were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.
The distinctive feature of the Pterocera is that the mantle in the
adult expands into a series of long finger- like processes each of which
^ or Pteroccras. - Jackson, op, cit., p. 38.
" " Koptos," pp. 7-9, Pis. III. and IV. : for a discussion of the signifi-
cance of these statues see Jean Capart, " Les Debuts de I'Art en Egypte,"
Brussels, 1904, p. 216 et seq.
70
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
secretes a calcareous process or " claw ". There are seven ^ of these
claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the
shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean
(where the Pterocei'a is not found), it is quite likely that the people
of the Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's ac-
count of the eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some
amulet or statue). Whether this
is the explanation of the confusion
or not, it is certain that the beliefs
associated with the cowry and the
octopus in the /Egean area are
identical with those linked up with
the cowiy and the Pterocera in
the Red Sea.
I have already mentioned that
the mandrake is believed to possess
the same magical powers. Sir
James Frazer has called attention
to the fact that in Armenia the
bryony {Bryonia albii) is a surro-
gate of the mandrake and is credited
with the same attributes.^ Lovell
Reeve (" Conchologia Iconica,"
VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea
Pterocera as the " Wild Vine
Root " species, previously known
as Stronibus radix bryoniae ; and Chemnitz (" Conch. Cab.,"
1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the French call it " Racine de brione
femelle imparfaite," and refer to it as " the maiden ", Here then
is further evidence that this shell (<^) was associated in some way
with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and {J)) was re-
garded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the chequered
history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its con-
fusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the
latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite's
cultural equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135),
' This may help to explain the peculiar sanctity of the shell.
"' Frazer, op. cit.^ 4.
Fig. 5. — Pterocera Bryonia,
THE Red Sea Spider-shell
Col. — the columella.
1-7 — the " claws ".
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 171
another of Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also
known as " the maiden ". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek
TTop(j)vpa ; and iTop4>vpco!JiaTa was the term applied to the flesh
of swine that had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.).
In fact, the purple- shell was ** the maiden " and also " the sow " :
in other words it was Aphrodite. The use of the term " maiden "
for the PtcT'occra suggests a similar identification. To complete
this web of proof it may be noted that an old writer has called the
mandrake the plant of Circe, the sorceress who turned men into
swine by a magic draught.^ Thus we have a series of shells, plants,
and marine creatures accredited with identical magical properties, and
each of them known in popular tradition as " the maiden". They are
all culturally associated with Aphrodite.
I shall have occasion {jLiifra, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret's account
of the discovery of the /Egean octopus-motif upon /Eneolithic objects
in Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain
conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see
the table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim
that the conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to
Quibell,' is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual inter-
course in its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If
this is true — and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved
— it suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of
origin of the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor,
for Bes and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from
there.'
That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother
and also with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming
an octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occuiTence
of octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America,
One of the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great
Mother is found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs
from Manabi in Central America,^ one of which I reproduce here
' Just as Hathor (or her surrogate Horus) turned men into the creatures
of Set, i.e. pigs, crocodiles, et cetera.
- " Excavations at Saqqara," 1905-1906, p. 14.
■^Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization, p. 34.
^ Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," 1907.
172 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
(Fig. 2 1 b). The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus ;
to that was added a body consisting of a Loligo ; and, to give
greater definiteness to this remarkable process of building up the
form of the goddess, conventional representations of her arms and legs
(and in some of the sculptures also the pudendum muliebre) were
added. Thus there can be no doubt of the identification of this
American Aphrodite and the octopus.
In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of
manifestations of the dragon.^ The first form assumed by the monster
in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size ; then it ap-
peared as a mighty octopus ; and lastly, as a whale, into whose
jaws the hero Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have
done elsewhere throughout the world (Frobenius, op. cit., pp. 59-219).
Houssay {pp. cit. infra) calls attention to the fact that at times
Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem," and has sug-
gested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the thunder-
bolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex {vide
supra. Fig. 1 3), and elsewhere {e.g. Fig. 1 2).
If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide
a more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the
Indian goddess Kali ^ than that usually given. If the " hands" really
represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings
the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite,
but also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of
cowiies. Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of
the bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor.
Just as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in
murdering his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battle-
^ A detailed summary of the literature relating to the world-wide dis-
tribution of certain phases of the dragon-myth is given by Frobenius, " Das
Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes," Berlin, 1904 : on pp. 63-5 he gives the Rata-
myth,
" Which can also be compared with the conventional form of the
thunderbolt,
' Of course the hands had the additional significance as trophies of her
murderous zeal. But i think this is a secondary rationalization of their
meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze statue (in the Calcutta Art
Gallery), representing Kali with her girdle of hands, is given by Mr, Donald
A, Mackenzie, " Indian Myth and Legend," p. xl.
ct
Fig. 23. — A series of Mycen.ean conventionalizations of the Argonaut and the
Octopus (after Tumpel), which provided the basis for Houssay's theory of
THE origin of THE TRISKELE {a, C, AND d) AND SWASTIKA {b AND e), AND SirET'S
theory to explain THE DESIGN OF BES'S FACE (/ AND g).
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 173
field flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the
remnant of his enemies.'
The Swastika.
Houssay {op. cit. supra) has made the interesting suggestion that
the swastika may have been derived from such conventionalized re-
presentations of the octopus as are shown in Fig. 23. This series
of sketches is taken from Tiimpel's memoir, which provided the
foundation for Houssay's hypothesis.
A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol/
which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a
history of several thousand years. Although so much has been
vmtten in attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made
his suggestion, so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest
attention to his hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his
memoir.^ Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight
(though surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory
advocated by Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall's astral speculations) Houssay's
suggestion offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the
swastika on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.
Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those
' F. T. Elworthy has summarized the extensive literature relating to
hand-amulets (" The Evil Eye," 1895; and " Horns of Honour," 1900).
Many of these hands have the definite reputation as fertility charms which
one would expect if Houssay's hypothesis of their derivation from the octopus
is well founded.
~ Thomas Wilson (" The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and
its Migrations ; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries
in Prehistoric Times" Report of the U.S. Xatiof/al Mz/scnin foJ- I'So^,
Washington, 1 896) has given a full and well-illustrated summary of most of
the literature : further information is provided by Count d'Alviella {op. at.
supra), "The Migration of Symbols"; by Zelia Nuttall ("The Funda-
mental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations," Archceological
and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass.,
1901) ; and Arthur Bernard Cook (" Zeus, A Study in Ancient Religion,"
Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 et scq.).
" Since this has been printed Mr. W. J. Perry has called my attention
to a short article by Rene Croste (" Le Svastika," Bull. Triviestriel dc la
Socicte Bayonnaise d Etudes RegionalesJ' 1918), in which Houssay's
hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by Guilleminot (" Les
Nouveaux Horizons de la Science ").
174 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
engraved upon the so-called " owl-shaped " (but, as Houssay has
conclusively demonstrated, really octopus-shaped) vases and a metal
figurine found by Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarhk/
The swastika is represented upon the mons Veneris of these figures,
which represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a
pot, which is an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the
Great Mother. The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility
amulet like the cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon
a pubic shield or conventionalized fig-leaf.
Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to
confer " good luck " and long life. Both this reputation and the
association with the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol
with the cowry, the Ptcrocera, and the octopus. It is clear then that
the swastika has the same reputation for magic and the same attributes
and associations as the octopus ; and it may be a conventionalized
representation of it, as Houssay has suggested.
It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with
the Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection
7^^r^5^7z;7/v invalidates the solar and astral theories recently championed
by Mr. Cook and Mrs. Nuttall respectively. I have already called
attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and all his
attributes from his mother. The whole symbolism of the Winged
Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving
and destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well-
established facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of
the truth of Houssay *s suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the
more XNidely accepted solar significance of the swastika.
Tiimpel called attention to the fact that, when they set about con-
ventionalizing the octopus, the Mycenaean artists often resorted to the
practice of representing pairs of "arms" as units and so making four-
limbed and three-limbed forms (Fig. 23), which Houssay regards as the
prototypes of the swastika and the triskele respectively. That such a
process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is
further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by
Rossi er,' who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each
^ Wilson {pp. cit., pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and 129) has collected
the relevant passages and illustrations from Schliemann's writings.
- Zcitschrift ptr Ethnologie, Bd. 37, p. 148.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 175
of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit
the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the
symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers
of the octopus in the Mycenaean designs (Fig. 23).
Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been
found in America.^ The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and
four pairs of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with de-
finite suckers.
Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swas-
tika may have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the
gypsum weight found in 1 90 1 by Sir Arthur Evans ' in the West
Magazine of the palace at Knossos {circa 1 500 B.C.). Upon the
surface of this weight the form of an octopus has been depicted, four
of the arms of which stand out in much stronger relief than the others.
The number four has a peculiar mystical significance {znde infra,
p. 206) and is especially associated with the Sun- god Horus. This
fact may have played some part in the process of reduction of the
number of limbs of the octopus to four ; or alternatively it may have
helped to emphasize the solar associations of the symbol, which other
considerations were responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the
pots from Hissarlik show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika
was confused with the sun's disc represented as a wheel with four
spokes.^ But the solar attributes of the swastika are secondary to
those of life-giving and luck-bringing, with which it was originally
endowed as a form of the Great Mother.
The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity
of Houssay's theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa
decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has
described the ceramic ware from Susa,^ regards this pot as Proto-
Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier's claim is justified we have
in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the swastika.
Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was supposed
to be wholly absent.
' Seler, Zeitschrift filr Ethnologic, Bd., 41, p. 409.
- Corolla Niimismatica, 1906, p. 342.
" A. B. Cook, " Zeus," pp. 198 cf scq.
^ " Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Paints de lAcro-
pole de Suse," Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, T. XIII, Rech.
Areheol., 5« serie. 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.
176 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite
swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations
have been studied by Wilson {pp. cit. supra) ? Or is it an instance
of independent evolution ? If it falls within the first category and is
really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be
explained ? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much
more ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol ? Or
was the Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic
meaning which it did not have before then ?
These are questions which we are unable to answer at present
because the necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them
merely to suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of
the Susian design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading.
Vincent ^ claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by
ceramic artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appear-
ance of Mycenaean art is fatal to Houssay's hypothesis. But I think
it is too soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already
a rigidly conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the
Mediterranean and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history
behind it. The octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in
the development of this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes {vide
sztpra, p. 171) was evolved, perhaps even before the time of the
Coptos statues of Min {supra, p. 1 69), or in the early days of Sum-
erian history when the conventional form of the water-pot was being
determined {infra, p. 1 79). These are mere conjectures, which I
mention merely for the purpose of suggesting that the time is not yet
ripe for using such arguments as Vincent's finally to dispose of Houssay's
octopus- theory.
There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycenaean spiral
and the volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence
provided by Minoan paintings and Mycenaean decorative art demon-
strates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived
from the octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs " and
also in the decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude god-
^ " Canaan," p. 340, footnote.
■^ Alice Grenfell, Journal of Egyptian ArchcBology, Vol. II, 1915,
p. 217 : and Ancient Egypt, 1916, Part I, p. 23.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 177
dess ' indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a
life- symbol.
In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types
M. Siret found cowry-shells in association with a series of flint im-
plements, crude idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the
forms of similar objects found with cowries and pecten shells at His-
sarlik.' But when the /Eneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain,
and the /Egean octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture
as a whole reveals unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian
inspiration.
M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in
Spain, the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the
Eastern Mediterranean (p. 59 ct seq). He .egards the octopus as
" a conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fer-
tilizing watery pnnciple " (p. 1 9). He elucidates a very interesting
feature of the /Eneolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The
spiral-motif of the /Egean gives place to an angular design, which he
claims to be due to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of
representing water (p. 40). If this interpretation is conect — and, in
spite of the slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it — it
affords a remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the
conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called attention.'*
Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of representing
the arms of the octopus v\dth its angularly bent extremities, it seems to
have an important bearing on Houssay's hypothesis of the swastika s
origin. For it would reveal the means by which the spiral or volute
shape of the limbs of the swastika became transformed into the angular
form, which is so characteristic of the conventional symbol.'
The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother in-
evitably led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her
' S. Reinach, Revue Anhcol., T XXVI, 1895, p. 369.
- L. Siret, " Questions de Chronologie at d'Ethnographie Iberiques,"
1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.
" Rivers, " History of Meianesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374 ; also Report
Brit. Association, 1912, p. 599.
' M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly
conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the fifteenth
and the twelfth centuries B.C. ; and he attributes it to Phoenician influence
(p. 63).
12
178 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
other surrogates. I have aheady referred (Chapter II, p. 98 ) to the associa-
tion of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia. But
other factors played a significant part in determining this specialization.
In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram ; and this creature's
spirally curved horn became the symbol of the thunder-god throughout
the Mediterranean area,^ and then further afield in Europe, Afnca, and
Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni's ram with the characteristic
horn. This blending of the influence of the octopus- and the ram's-
horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional representation of thunder.
This is displayed in its most definite form in China, Japan, Indonesia,
and America, where we find the separate spiral used as a thunder-
symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of the head as a token of
the god of thunder.^
The Mother Pot.
In the lecture on " Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred
to the enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties
which the inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved.
When this event happened a new view developed in explanation of
the part played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer re-
garded as the real parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the
seed was planted and nurtured during the course of its growth and
development. Hence in the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
the picture of a pot of water was taken as the symbol of v/omanhood,
the "vessel" which received the seed. A globular water-pot, the
common phonetic value of which is JVzv or N^u, was the symbol of
the cosmic waters, the god Ahv (A'^?/), whose female counterpart was
the goddess JVitt.
In his report, " A Collection of Hieroglyphs," ^ Mr. F. LI.
Griffith discusses the bowl of water {(i) and says that it stands for the
female principle in the words for vulva and woman. When it is re-
called that the cowry (and other shells) had the same double signi-
ficance, the possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may
^ Cook, " Zeus," p. 346 et seq.
" This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 1 9) of the
elephant-headed god— see Nature, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.
^ Archceol. Survey of Egypt, 1898, p. 3.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE
79
not have arisen between the not veiy dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for
" a shell " (/^) and " the bowl of water " (woman) (/).'
Referring to the sign Q'^ and li) for " a shell," Mr, Griffith says
(p. 25) : "It is regularly found at all periods in the word kazvt =
altar,' and perhaps only in this word : but it is a peculiarity of the
Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures r, //, and / is
in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but also as a
Fig. 6.
(a) Picture cf a bowl of water — the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to km (the word hmt
means " woman "j — Griffith, " Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.
(b) " A basket of sycamore figs " — Wilkinson's " Ancient Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 323.
(c) and {d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning " wife " and are
apparently taken from [b]. But (c) is identical with (?), which, according to Griffith (p.
14), represents a bivalve shell {g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely {//).
The varying conventionalizations of {a) or (b) are shown in {d), (e), and (/) (Griffith,
" Hieroglyphics," p. 34).
[k] The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (A), and, ac-
cording to Griffith (" Hieroglyphics," p. 26), " is probably derived from the same root, on
account of its shell-like outline ".
(/) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as Nii and Nut.
(in) A " pomegranate " (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at Carthage
(Arthur J. Evans, " Mycenasan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 46).
(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins of Central
Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian pot-sign (;) (which also has
the significance of mother-goddess) is worthy of note.
phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled ^ (in the text-figure) for /z^
{k/za), or apparently for ^ alone in many words,
" The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root,
on account of its shell-like outline or Z'icc versa."
^ Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin tesfa as " shell " and
" bowl ".
" Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and the
widespread use of large shells as bowls for " holy water " in Christian
churches.
180 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India
and elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower re-
presents his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has
Fig. 7. . ,
la) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a lotus, re-
P""?M"f a'pyrr sX"etf^'n^ct\;d by goddesses and animistically identified with them
^^^'^^(J SCnSS:J^S:^-o5P^-e triden. and the thunder-weapon.
(d) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods.
led us towards the inference that the original form of Hathor was a
shell-amulet/ it seems not unUkely that her identification with the lotus
' Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Depart-
ment of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a remarkable
piece of exidence which affords additional corroboration of the view that
Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the famous archaic
palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four representations ot
Hathor's head, takes the place of the original cowries that were suspended
from more primitive girdles. , . . . 1 c \c ■ ^A
The cowries of the head ornament of pnmitive peoples ot Atnca and
Asia (and of the Mediterranean area in early times- Schliemann s iiios.
Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D^ Spanton
" Water Lilies of Egypt," Ancient Egypt, 1917, Part 1, Figs. 19, 20 and
21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have reproduced
in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found (see bpanton s
Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical thunder-weapon.
J
Fig. 24.
(a) and {/>) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann).
{n) The so-called " owl- shaped " vase is really a representation of the
Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
(/') The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon
her head and another in her hands — a three-fold representation of the Great
Mother as a pot.
(t) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is repre-
sented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.
('0' 0')' C-O' (a')' ^^^ (^^) •^ series of coins from Central Greece (after
Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its pot-
hke body and palm-tree-like arms {/).
(/) Sepia ofpcii/al/s (after Tryon).
(//) and (/) The so-called " spouting vases " in the hands of the Baby-
lonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello,
after Ward (" Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215).
The " spouting vases " have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia
to suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of the
latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and cephalopods in
Western Asia and the Mediterranean.
Fic3. 24.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 181
may have arisen fiom the confusion between the latter and the cowry,
which no doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell
and the plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in
which they developed.
The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the
factors that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with
those of the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually
represented pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, h and /).
This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia,
Egypt, India,^ and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the in-
fluence of these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread
among the Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving
powers are enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea
spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a
jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's
cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is
reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the
earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so
Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows,
serpents, frogs, dragons, birds, pearls, and " nine maidens that blow the
fire under the cauldron " ; and, if the nature of these relationships be
examined, each of them will be found to be a link between the pot
and the Great Mother.
The witch's cauldron and the maidens who assist in the prepara-
tion of the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of
Hathor's pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the
Sektl who churn up the didi and the barley with which to make the
elixir of immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive god-
dess herself.
Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional
references from Celtic and Indian literature in coiToboration of these wide-
spread associations of the pot with the Great Mother ; and he reminds
me that in Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the
Indian Mahabharata. It is the source of food and anything else
that is wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some
future occasion I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the
Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses
(corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven pots.
k (k^ -
t
182 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
pot's life-giving powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my
attention. At present, however, I must content myself with the state-
ment that the pot's identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted
in ancient belief throughout the greater part of the world.']
The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an
octopus seem to have been blended in Mycenaean lands, where the
so-called " owl -shaped " pots were clearly intended to represent the
goddess in both these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffu-
sion of these ideas into more remote parts of the world took place
syntheses with other motives produced a great variety of most complex
forms. In Honduras pottery vessels have been found " which give
tangible expression to the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the
crocodile-like Makara, star-spangled like Hathor's cow. Aphrodite's
' The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired
originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the fountain-
head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of Mankind,
provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated into the varied
assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true meaning of the Quest
of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading the fabled accounts
of it in the light of the ancient search for the elixir of life and the historical
development of the narrative describing that search.
A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L.
Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail " (1913). Her theory will be
found, after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general
argument of this book.
Mr. F. LI. Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb
" coire cum" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism of
the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides the
material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-bom) in the Adi
Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVllI, in Roy's translation) of
the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has kindly called my
attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed of a Rishi. A wide-
spread variant of the same story is the conception of a child from a drop of
blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland, " Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp.
98 and 1 44). If the pot can thus create a human being, it is easy to under-
stand how it acquired its reputation of being also able to multiply food and
provide an inexhaustible supply. Similarly, all substances, such as barley,
rice, gold, pearls, and jade, to which the possession of a special vital essence
or " soul substance " was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce
themselves and so increase in quantity of their own activities. As " givers of
life " they were also able to add to their own life- substance, in other words
to grow like any other living being.
^ "An American Dragon," Man, November, 1918.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 183
pig, and Soma's deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the
Eastern Asiatic dragon (see Chapter II, p. 103).
The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and
rebirth. When Nicodemus asks : "How can a man be born again
when he is old ? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb,
and be born ? " he is told : " Except a man be born of water and of
the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is
born of the flesh is flesh : and that which is born of the spirit is spirit "
(John iii. 4, 5, and 6).
The phrase " born of water " refers to the birth " of the flesh " ;
and the mother's womb is the vessel containing " the water " from which
the new life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of
Isis : " TeTcipTr) 8e Tr}i> '\criv iv iTavvypoi
Fig. 25.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 185
travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents seeking the
most pious oi kings in order that she might establish her cult with him
and bless him with renewed youth.'
Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and
Diktynna, the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses
afforded help to women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians
of the portal. The goddess of streams and marshes was identified with
the mugwort [Arteniisia), which was hung above the door in the place
occupied at other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a
crocodile (dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant
could open locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also with-
hold the vital essence and so cause disease or death ; but she pos-
sessed the means of curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like
all the other goddesses, was a witch.
In former lectures ' 1 have often discussed the remarkable feature
of Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exag-
gerate the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great
temples become transformed into little more than monstrously over-
grown doorways or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound
JnHuence exerted by this line of development upon the Dravidian
temples of India and the symbolic gateways of China and Japan.
This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea
that they represented the means of communication between the living
and the dead, and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired
a rebirth into a new form of existence. It was presumably for this
reason that the winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above
the lintels of these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phoenicia, the Mediter-
ranean Area, and Western Asia, but also in America,' and in modified
forms in India, Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.
The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk
came to acquire the power of life-giving, " the healing in its wings,"
WAX have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these
virtues only when it assumed the place of the other " Eye of Re,
the Great Mother, In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt
No doubt the two uraei of the Saga of the Winged Disk.
' A. B. Cook, " Zeus," Vol. I, p. 244.
■'Journal of the Manchester ILgyttian anJ Orieiifal Society, 1916.
* " The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America,"
BuJletin of tJie John Rylands Library, 1916.
186 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
to represent the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more
usual winged disk. In the /Egean area the original practice of repre-
senting the Great Mother was retained long after it was superseded
in Egypt by the use of the winged disk (the sun-god).
Over the lintel of the famous " Lion Gate" at Mycenae, instead
of the winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother
Goddess, flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other
representatives of herself (Fig. 26).
In his " Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," Sir Arthur Evans has
shown that all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and
the i^gean area) between the representation of the actual goddess and
her pillar- and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the
sun itself appears above the pillar between the lions.^ In the large
series of seals fi'om Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been
described in Mr. William Hayes Ward's monograph,^ we find mani-
fold links between both the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.
The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed
into the " tree of life " and the winged disk is perched upon its sum-
mit. Thus we have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The
" tree of life " of the Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk
which is really her surrogate or that of the sun-god, who took over
from her the power of life-giving (Figs. 25 and 26).
In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada the
life-giving power is h'ipled. There is not only the tree representmg
the Great Mother herself ; but also the double axe (the winged-disk
homologue of the sun-god) ; and the more direct representation of
him as a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25,/).
The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar
seems also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the
materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also
the bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.*
^ Evans's, Fig. 41, p. 63.
"" " The Seal Cylinders of Weslern Asia," 1910.
" Paribeni, " Monumenti antichi dell' accademia dei Lincei, ' XIX, puni.
], pll. 1-3 ; and V. Duhn, " Arch. f. Religionswissensch.," XII, p. 161, pll.
2-4 ; quoted by Blinkenberg, " The Thunder Weapon, " pp. 20 and 21,
* Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the pestle, which
was identified with the handle used in the churning of the ocean (see de
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 187
As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, " the
Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the Soma-
libation, becomes in the Vedas itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a very
characteristic and hequent Oriental conceit in accordance with which
the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified "}
*' The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify
thunderbolts." " In the Ri^- 1 cda, we read of him [Soma] as jyotih-
ratkah, i.e. ' mounted on a car of light ' (IX, 5, 86, verse 43) ; or
again : ' Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand . . . mounted on
a chariot ' (IX, 4, 76, verse 2) " — (p. 171).
" Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and
herds, but above all, the giver of immortality " (p. 140).
Sii' Arthur Evans is of opinion "that in the case of the Cypiiote
cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic
column itself, are taken hom an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference
has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenaeans of
Cyprus were identified with divinities having some points in common
with the sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother "
{op. cit., pp. 63 and 64).
In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of
the goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru,
the possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great
Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have
helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill,
which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other
legends produced the auirita of the gods, either in the form of the
soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which collected
there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the real
reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain was
the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern
mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother.
Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud-and rain-
phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in the
Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology. Vol II, p. 361), was a phallic em-
blem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the churn at a
later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the Mother Pot or
uterus ; but we are not justified in assuming that this was its primary signi-
ficance.
^ Gladys M. N. Davis, " The Asiatic Dionysos," p. 1 72.
188 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in
Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls " the
horns of consecration " was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I
was not aware that Professor Newberry (" Two Cults of the Old
Kingdom," Annals of Aj'ckcEology and Anthropology, Liverpool,
Vol, I, 1 908, p. 28) had already suggested this identification,]
In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis
to pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version,
the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir
which would make them immortal. To this end. Mount Meru [the
Great Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk], Vishnu, in his second
avatar as a tortoise ' supported the mountain on his back ; and the
Naga serpent Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods
seizing its head and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they
had churned the amrita or water of life, Wilfrid Jackson has called
attention to the fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in
India and Japan, but also in the Precolumbian Codex Cortes drawn
by some Maya artist in Central America.'
The horizon is the birthplace of the gods ; and the birth of the
deity is depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal
between its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the
sun-god, just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the
" ridiculous mouse " (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is de-
scribed as giving birth — "the gates of the firmament are undone for
Teti himself at break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the
horizon]. "He comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian
Pyramid Texts — Breasted's translation).
In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth
and the emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple
is a common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a
goddess of the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also
grows in her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks.
This reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her
skill in midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend ' of the treasure-
house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great " giver
^ The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her representatives
in Central America.
"Jackson, "Shells, etc.," pp. 57 et seq. ^ Vide supra, p. 158.
Fig. 26.
(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the
horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge, " Gods of the Egyptians,"
Vol. II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut
is giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as
Sothis, the " Opener of the Way " for the sun.]
(/') The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate
of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the
Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, o/^. cit., p. 39). This indicates the identity
of what Evans calls " the horns of consecration " and the " mountains of the
horizon," and also suggests how confusion may have arisen between the
mountams and the cow's horns.
(r) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rismg between the Eastern
Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, ('/. cit., p. 373).
{d^ The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the
Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to " the ridicu-
lous mouse " — Smintheus). The aiikli (hfe-sign) below the sun is the de-
terminative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is heraldically
supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.
(f) Part of the design from a Mycenaean vase from Old Salamis (after
Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown along-
side one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe representing the
god-
(/) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idaean Cave, now in
the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared with
the Egyptian picture {li), it will be seen that Hathor's place is taken by the
tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which m the former {ci) are
growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed alongside the " horns ".
In the complete design {inde Evans, op. cit., p. 44) a votary is represented
blowing a conch- shell trumpet to animate the deity in the sacred tree.
{g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess
(after Evans, Fig. 66).
(/^) Another Mycenaean design comparable with (<).
(/) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenae (after Evans, Fig. 34). If
this be compared with the Egyptian picture {a) it will be noted that the Great
Mother IS now replaced by a tree : the Eastern Mountains by bulls, from
whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This design
affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the Eastern Mountains
may be confused with the cow's head (see b and c) or with the cow itself.
Newberry (^Ainia/s of A/r/iico/ogv ami Aiithropoloo^w Liverpool, Vol. I,
p. 28) has called attention to the intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt)
of the Eastern Mountains, the Bull and the Double Axe — a certain token of
cultural contact with Crete.
(/i') The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenae. The pillar
form of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which
correspond to the cattle of the design (/) and the Eastern Mountains of ( which in turn led to it being called a pot, and from
that being identified with the goddess.
I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this state -
' I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word duddim (Genesis xxx.
14) verbatim: "The Encylcopcedia Biblica says (s.v. 'Mandrakes'):
' The Hebrew name, duda im, was no doubt popularly associated v^ith
dodlrn, D^7^^' ' ^^^^ " » but its real etymology (like that of fjavcpayopw;)
is obscure '.
"The same word is translated 'mandrakes ' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
" Dudahii occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1 , where it is usually translated
* baskets' (* baskets of figs '). Here it is the plural of a word dud, which
means sometimes a ' pot ' or ' kettle,' sometimes a ' basket '. The etymology
is again doubtful.
I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow
or other the same etymology, and that dudu-lm in Genesis has no real con-
nexion with dodiin ' love '.
The meaning ' pot ' {liud, plur. duda-'nii) is probably more original
than ' basket '. Does duda-'nn in Genesis and Song of Songs denote some
kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit ? '
" The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious
beliefs and is almost worldwide in its distribution.
^ The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form
(Spanton, op. cii.. Fig. 51) that is identical with a common Mediterranean
symbol of the Great Mother, called " pomegranate " by Sir Arthur Evans (see
my text-fig. 6, p. 1 79, w), which is a surrogate of the apple and mandrake.
The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a jar of water (text-fig. 6, /) and
the goddess Nu of the fruit of the poppy (which was closely associated with
the mandrake by reason of its soporific properties) may have assisted in the
transference of their attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig, 7, iiandara is
homologous with the uiandraQOfci. But so far as I am aware, there
is no adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.
The derivation from the Sanskrit words miDidros and agora seems
to fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been formu-
lating.
In the Egyptian story the Selcti of Heliopolis pounded the didi
in a mortar to make " the giver of life," which by a simple confusion
might be identified wdth the goddess herself in her capacity as " the
giver of life ". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend.
Lakshmi, or Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphro-
dite, who was born from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lak-
shmi was the goddess of beauty, love, and prosperity.
Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants
and substances, it is important that I should emphasize the role of blood
and blood- substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red
berries in the various legends. These Iife-gi\ing and death-dealing
substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive
demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were
transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon
which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.
[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became
attached to the }^?)X)X.i> ginseng and shang-lnh — see de Groot, Vol. II,
p. 316 et seq. ; also Kumagusu Minakata, N^ature, Vol. LI, April
25. 1895, p. 608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The
^ The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary rationalization of an
incident which had no such implication originally.
- The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil " (Genesis ii. 17) pro-
duced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so that
they realized their nakedness : they became conscious of sex and made
girdles of fig-leaves \yide siipra, p. 155). In other words, the tree of life
had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In Henderson's " Celtic
Dragon Myth " (p. xl) we read : " The berries for which she [Medbl craved
were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the eating of which by
mortals brings death," and further : " The berries of the rowan tree are the
berries of the gods " (p. xliii). I have already suggested the homology be-
tween these red berries, the mandrake, and the red ochre of Hathor's elixir.
Thus we have another suggestion of the identity of the tree of paradise and
the mandrake.
206 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGOiN
fact that the Chinese make use of the Syriac word yabruha {vide
siip7'a) suggests the source of these Chinese legends.]
The Measurement of Time.
It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of
womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great
Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the
regulator of human beings.^ This was the starting-point of the system
of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and death
controlled and measured the lives of mankind.
But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of
time into months ; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine
attributes to the number twenty-eight.
The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its
rising and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as
cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of
the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought
the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that
the direction of the river Nile," which was the guide to the orientation
of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special
sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the direction
of the deceased's head with the position of the original homeland and
the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a " divine "
region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may have
acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.'*
When the north and the south were added to the other two
cardinal points the intimate association of the east and the west with
the measurement of time would be extended to include all the four
cardinal points.' Four became a sacred number associated with time-
measurement, and especially with the sun. '
Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the
^ The Greek Chronus was the son of Selene.
" Or possibly the situations of Upper and Lower Egypt.
^ See G. Elliot Smith, " The Ancient Egyptians ".
* The association of north and south with the primaiy subdivision of the
state probably led to the inclusion of the other two cardinal points to make
the subdivision four-fold.
^ The number four was associated with the sun-god. There were four
" children of Horus " and four spokes to the wheel of the sun.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 207
sanctity of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested ' that
the four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such
as the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a v/oven mat,
which was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of
the evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures
suggests that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-
bricks helped in the process of determinmg the four-sided form of house
and room.
When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four- sided pyramid was
developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with
the four cardinal points ; and there was a corresponding development
and enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the
divine house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated
to the form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at
the four corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs
supported the Celestial Cow.
Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special
sanctity and brought them into association with the measurement of
time, it was a not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into
four parts and so biing the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once
this was done the moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize
this procedure, and the length of the week was incidentally brought
into association with the moon-goddess, who had seven avatars, per-
haps originally one for each day of the week. At a later peiiod the
number seven was arbitrarily brought into relationship with the Pleiades.
The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphro-
dite was chief of the fates.
The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's
priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year ; and it plays
a prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanc-
tity of the number received special recognition. When the goddess be-
came the destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted
of intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as
seven demons."
• " Architecture," p. 24.
" See the chapter on " Magic " in Jevons, " Comparative Religion ".
In his article " Magic (Egyptian)," in Hastings' EncyclopcEdia of Religion
and Ethics (p. 266), Dr. Alan Gardiner makes the following statement :
208 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and
month but also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to
suggest that the earliest year-count v>^as determined by the annual in-
undation of the river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter
and summer would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision
of time as the year ; but the exact measurement of that period and the
fixing of an arbitraiy commencement, a New Year's day, were due to
other reasons. In the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is
recorded that the incident of the soothing of Hathor by means of the
blood-coloured beer (which, as I have explained elsewhere,^ is a refer-
ence to the annual Nile flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's
day.
Hathor was regarded in ti*adition as the cause of the inundation.
She slaughtered mankind and so caused the original " flood " : in the next
phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer ; and in the
ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another
story was reputed to be " the tears of Isis ".
Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the
inundation and of the year ; and the former event marked the beginning
of the year and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration.
Thus Hathor * was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week ;
while her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.
" The mystical potency attaching to certain numbers doubtless originated in
associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number seven, in
Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus we find
references to the seven Hathors : cf. al eirTa Tv)(ai rov ovpavov (A.
Dieterich, Eine MitJirasliturgie, Leipzig, 1910, p. 71): 'the seven
daughters of Re,' who ' stand and weep and make seven knots in their
seven tunics ' ; and similarly ' the seven hawks who are in front of the barque
of Re '."
Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the repre-
sentatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days ?
^Chapter II, p. 118.
''' We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that played
an essential part in the development of the story we are considering was the
search for the means by which youth could be restored. It is significant
that Hathor's reputed ability to restore youth is mentioned in the Pyramid
Texts in association with her functions as the measurer of years : for she
is said " to turn back the years from King Teti," so that they pass over him
without increasing his age (Breasted, " Thought and Religion in Ancient
Egypt," p. 124).
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 209
In Tylor's " Early History of Mankind " (pp. 352 et sc(j.) there
is a concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain
of Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or
bathed in it. He cites instances hom India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia,
Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi,
places the Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the
earth " (p. 353).
The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian
New Year.^ Hence it became " the second sun in heaven," and was
identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification
of Hathor with this "second sun"' may explain why the goddess is
said to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon
his forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the fire-
spitting uraeus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the
myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of
Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed
him to make.
In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Man-
kind, New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild
orgies of beer drinking.
This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary,
and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day
in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical pro-
gress of civilization.
The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the starting-
point in the fi-aming of a calendar.
Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of
the year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under
Egyptian influence.
The month 'A^poStcrta (so-called from the festival of the goddess)
began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and lasos, just as Hathor's
feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
^ Breasted (" Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states
that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis, sister of
Osiris, they said to him {i.e. Osiris] : " The beloved daughter, Sothis, makes
thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of ' Year ' (mpt) ".
" The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became
specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.
14
210 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite
worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy ; and the term vcrryjpLa '
became identified with the state of emotional derangement associated
with such orgies. The common belief that the term " hysteria " is de-
rived directly h'om the Greek word for uterus is certainly erroneous.
The word va-Tijpia was used in the same sense as 'A<^po8to-ta, that is,
as a synonym for the festivals of the goddess. The " hysteria " was
the name for the orgy in celebration of the goddess on New Year's day :
then it was applied to the condition produced by these excesses ; and
ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to similar emotional
disturbances. Thus both the terms " hysteria " and " lunacy " ^ are
intimately associated with the earliest phases in the moon-goddess's
history ; and their survival in modern medicine is a striking tribute to
the strong hold of effete superstition in this branch of the diagnosis and
treatment of disease.'
I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal
of birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman repre-
sentative Diana and her masculine avatar Dianus or Janus gave the
name to the commencement of the year. The Great Mother not
only initiated the measurement of the year, but she (or her representative)
lent hei' name to the opening of the year in various countries.
But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the
record not only of the circumstances which were responsible for origin-
ating the measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but
also of the materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs pre-
^ " At Argos the principal fete of Aphrodite was called va-Tyjpia because
they offered sacrifices of pigs (" Athen." Ill, 49, 96 ; " Clem. Alex. Protr."
33)" — Article " Aphrodisia," Diet, des Antiquitcs, p. 308. The Greek
word for pig had the double significance of " pig " and " female organs of
reproduction ".
"Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac " mania" (see Tiimpel, op. cit., pp. 394
and 395).
^ There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of being
" moonstruck," and many people, even medical men v/ho ought to know
better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in pro-
ducing " lunacy ". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of this
from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in this country
within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds of traditions is
one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect any real reform in the
treatment of mental disease in this country.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 211
served in the legends of Greece and India and many other countiies
further removed from the original centre of civilization When the
elaboration of the early story involved the destruction of mankind, it
became necessaiy to provide some explanation of the continued exist-
ence of man upon the earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating
a new race of men from the fragments of the old or from the clay into
which they had been transformed {siipfa, p. 196). In course of time
this secondary creation became the basis of the familiar story of the
original creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed
in other ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were
blended into one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and
a succession of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T. A. Joyce's
" Mexican Aichasology, " p. 30) one example of these series of mythi-
cal epochs or world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis : —
When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun
to give light to men.
1 . This sun terminated in the destruction of mankind, including a
race of giants, hy jaguars.
2. The second sun was Quetzalcoatl, and his age terminated in
a terrible hitrruane, during which mankind was transformed into
monkeys.
3. The third sun was Tlaloc, and the destruction came by a rain
of fire.
4. The fourth was Chalchintlicue, and mankind was finally de-
stroyed by a dchige, during which they became fishes.
The first episode is clearly based upon the story of the lioness-form
of Hathor destroying mankind : the second is the Babylonian story of
Tiamat, modified by such Indian influences as are revealed in the
Ramayana : the third is inspired by the Saga of the Winged Disk ;
and the fourth by the story of the Deluge.
Similar stories of world ages have been preserved in the mythologies
of Eastern Asia, India, Western Asia, and Greece, and no doubt were
derived from the same original source.
The Seven-headed Dragon.
I have already referred to the magical significance attached to the
number seven and the widespread references to the seven Hathors, the
seven winds to destroy Tiamat, the seven demons, and the seven fates.
212 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
In the story of the Flood there is a similar insistence on the seven-fold
nature of many incidents of good and ill meaning in the narrative. But
the dragon with this seven-fold power of wrecking vengeance came to
be symbolized by a creature with seven heads.
A Japanese story told in Henderson's notes to Campbell's " Celtic
Dragon Myth " ^ will serve as an introduction to the seven-headed
monster : —
" A man came to a house where all were weeping, and leained
that the last daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon v^th
seven or eight ' heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a
victim. He went with her, enticed the dragon to drink sake from pots
set out on the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of
his tail he took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's
state sword. He married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or
talisman which is preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price
so preserved is a mirror. "
The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-
myth, and the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia,
East Africa, and the Mediterranean area.
The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven
Hathors. In Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have bor-
rowed the Egyptian idea of the seven Hathors. " There are seven
Mari deities, all sisters, who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven
sisters are regarded vaguely as wives or sisters of Siva." ^ At one
village in the Trichinopoly district Bishop Whitehead found that the
goddess Kaliamma was represented by seven brass pots, and adds :
"It is possible that the seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the
seven virgins sometimes found in Tamil shrines " (p. 36). But the
goddess who animates seven pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is
probably well on the way to becoming a dragon with seven heads.
There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories
that reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottish
^ " The Celtic Dragon Myth," by J. F. Campbell, with the " Caste of
Fraoch and the Dragon," translated vsith introduction by George Henderson,
Edinburgh, 1911, p. 134.
* My italics.
^ Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), " The Village Gods of South
India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 213
story the seven-headed dragon comes in a storm of wind and spray.
The East African serpent comes in a storm of wind and dust.' In the
Babylonian story seven winds destroy Tiamat,
" The famous legend of the seven devils current in antiquity was
of Babylonian origin, and belief in these evil spirits, who fought against
the gods for the possession of the souls and bodies of men, was wide-
spread throughout the lands of the Mediterranean basin. Here is one
of the descriptions of the seven demons : —
" Of the seven the first is the south wind. . . .
" The second is a dragon whose open mouth. . . .
" The third is a panther whose mouth spares not.
" The fourth is a frightful python. . . .
" The fifth is a wrathful . . . who knows no turning back.
" The sixth is an on-rushing . . . who against god and king [attacks].
" The seventh is a hurricane, an evil wind which [has no mercy].
" The Babylonians were inconsistent in their description of the seven
devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact
they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and
their visions of the other evil spiiits are innumerable. According to the
incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into his
body and
" ' My God who walks at my side they drove away.'
" The king calls himself ' the son of his God '. We have here the
most fundamental doctrines of Babylonian theology, bonowed originally
from the religious beliefs of the Sumerians. For them man in his
natural condition, at peace with the gods and in a state of atonement,
is protected by a divine spirit whom they conceived of as dwelling in
their bodies along with their souls or ' the breath of life '. In many
ways the Egyptians held the same doctrine, in their belief concerning
the ka " or the soul's double. According to the beliefs of the Su-
merians and Babylonians these devils, evil spirits, and all evil powers
stand for ever waiting to attach {sic) (? attack) the divine genius with
each man. By means of insinuating snares they entrap mankind in
the meshes of their magic. They secure possession of his soul and
body by leading him into sin, or bringing him into contact with tabooed
things, or by overcoming his divine protector with sympathetic magic.
^ " The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 1 36. - See Chapter I. p. 47.
214 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
. . , These adversaries of humanity thus expel a man's god, or genius,
or occupy his body. These rituals of atonement have as their primary
object the ejection of the demons and the restoration of the divine pro-
tector. Many of the prayers end with the petition, ' Into the kind
hands of his god and goddess restore him *.
" Representations of the seven devils are somewhat rare. . . . The
Brit. Mus. figurine represents the demon of the winds with body of a
dog, scorpion tail, bird legs and feet" (S. Langdon, "A Ritual of
Atonement for a Babylonian King," The Mitseutn /ou7'nal\[Jmv&[:'Si\y
of Pennsylvania], Vol. VIII, No. 1, March, 1917, pp. 39-44).
But the Babylonians not only adopted the Egyptian conception of
the power of evil as being seven demons, but they also seem to have
fused these seven into one, or rather given the real dragon seven-fold
attributes.^
In " The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia " ' (British
Museum), Marduk's weapon is compared to " the fish with seven wings ".
The god himself is represented as addressing it in these words :
" The tempest of battle, my weapon of fifty heads, which like the
great serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven heads, which like the
strong serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe ".
In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the
dragon's heads is given as seven or eight ; and de Visser is at a loss to
know why " the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of
[Japanese] dragons".""
I have already emphasized the worldwide association of the seven-
^ I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems raised by this
identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil spirit. But it is worthy
of note that while the Babylonian might be possessed by seven evil spirits,
the Egyptian could have as many as fourteen good spirits or kas. In a form
somewhat modified by the Indian and Indonesian channels, through which
they must have passed, these beliefs still persist in Melanesia ; and the illu-
minating account of them given by C. E. Fox and F. W. Drew (" Beliefs
and Tales of San Cristoval," Jonrn. Roy. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. XLV,
1915, p. 161), makes it easier to us to form some conception of their original
meaning in ancient Babylonia and Egypt. The ataro which possesses a man
(and there may be as many as a hundred of these " ghosts ") leaves his body
at death and usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate, turtle,
crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).
-Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, Hibbert Lectiires, p.
282.
=^ Op. cit., p. 150.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 215
headed dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called " Nautilus "
by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the storm-bringer :
but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole tissue of mythology,
this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent warner against
storms. This seems to be another Imk between the seven-headed
dragon and these cephalopoda.
I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the
process of blending the seven arata/'S of the dragon into a seven-headed
dragon may have been facilitated by its identification v/ith the Pterocera
and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the shell-fish were
forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 1 72) : the confusion between the
numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created during the
transference of the Pterocera s attributes to the octopus {znde supra,
p. I 70) ; and the Babylonian reference to " the fish with seven wings,"
which was afterwards rationalized into " a great serpent with seven
heads," seems to provide the clue v/hich explains the origin of the seven-
headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at the same
time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell {^Pterocera), the
process of converting the shell-fish's seven " wings " into seven heads
would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller. If this hypothesis
has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the beliefs concerning the
Pterocera must (fiom the habitat of the shell- fish) have come into ex-
istence upon the shores of Southern Arabia would explain the appeai-
ance of the derived myth of the seven-headed dragon in Babylonia.
My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being
the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed
by the thunderbolt, by the design upon a kiater from Apulia.* The
weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. TTiough
further research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has con-
vinced me of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived
spiral ornament with thunder and the dragon, and has suggested that
the process of blending the seven demons into a seven-headed demon
has been assisted by the symbolism of the octopus and the Pterocera.
' A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269) the rider
in the car is n'elconiing the thunderbolt as a divine gift from heaven, i.e. as
a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good luck. For a design representing
the octopus as a weapon of the god Evos see the title-page of Usener's " Die
Sintfluthsagen," 1899.
216 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
The Pig.
I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible
for the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and
the moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been
extended to include other animals which were used as food, such as the
sheep, goat, pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the
cow continued to occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal ;
and the cow-cult extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa,
to Western Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean
area the pig played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.' In
the latter country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with
the pig ; and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis)
was taken by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean
the pig was also identified with the Great Mother and associated with
lunar and sky phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented '^
with the star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in
her role as a sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete
the identification with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow
suckling the infant Minos or the youthful Zeus- Dionysus as his
Egyptian prototype was suckled by the divine cow.
Now the cowry-shell was called x^^/^o? by the Greeks. The
pig, in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell ;
and it is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the
reason for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great
Mother was nothing more than the cowry-shell.
But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified
but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term x^^P'^'^ liad
an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and its
acquired meaning "cowiy". This fact seems to have played some
part in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being " an unclean animal ".'^
But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the
eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen
^ And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as America.
- Schliemann, " llios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.
■^ This is seen in the case of the Persian word kkor, which means both
" pig " and " harlot " or " filthy woman ". The possibility of the deriva-
tion of the old English word " [w]hore " from the same source is worth
considering.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 217
originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great
Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these
deities in their lunar aspects.
According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus- Dionysus
was suckled by a sow. For this reason " the Cretans consider this
animal sacred, and will not taste of its flesh ; and the men of Praesos
perform sacred rites with the sow, making her the first offering at the
sacrifice ".^
But when the pig also assumed the role of Set, as the enemy of
Osiris, and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took
the place of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwhole-
someness of pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as
a dirty animal which the pig itself acquii^ed, for the reasons which I
have already stated.
I have already referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's
denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141 ). Miss Harrison
does not seem to have realized that in her book' she has collected
evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in
the interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 1 50 et se^.),
she has called attention to the important rite upon the day " called in
popular parlance ' dXaSe ixvcrTaL,' ' to the sea ye mystics ' " (p. I 52),
which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's birth
from the sea.
The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon ; and each of the candi-
dates for admission " took with him his own pharmakos,^ a young pig *'.
" Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig " (p. 1 52).
On one occasion, so it is said, " when a mystic was bathing his pig, a
sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body " (p. I 53). So impor-
tant was the pig in this ritual " that when Eleusis was permitted (B.C.
350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as
the sign and symbol of her mysteries " (p. 1 53).
" On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenaeus, two
vessels called plemochocr are emptied, one towards the East and the
other towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic
^ L. R. Famell, " Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p. 37.
' " Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."
" Which, in fact, was intended as the equi^alent of ^up^oKov uQavama^;,
" the redeemins blood ".
218 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
formulary was pronounced. . . . What the mystic formulary was we
cannot certainly say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the
p!emocho(€ with a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says * In the
Eleusinian mysteries, looking up to the sky they cried aloud " Rain,"
and looking down to earth they cried " Be fruitful " ' " (p. 161).
In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's
pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which
in a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of
the river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification
in the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at
about the same time ; and this was rationalized by the myth that she
was born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a
sow. Hence these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in
the Mediterranean, at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part
in them. The candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not
primarily as a rite of purification,^ as is commonly claimed, but because
the sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the cowry, which lived
in the sea, and of the Great Mother,^ who was sprung from the cowry
and hence born of the sea. In the story of the man carrying the pig
being attacked by a sea-monster, perhaps we have an incident of that
Madespread story of the shark guarding the pearls. We have already
seen how it v/as distorted into the fantastic legend of the dog's role in
the digging up of mandrakes. In the version we are now considering
the pearl's place is taken by the pig, both of them sunogates of the
cowry.
The object of the ceremony of carrying the pig into the sea was not
the cleansing of " the unclean animal," nor was \\. primarily a rite of
purification in any sense of the term : it was simply a ritual procedure
foi" identifying the sacrifice with the goddess by putting it in her own
medium, and so transforming the surrogate of the sea-shell, the proto-
type of the sea-born goddess, into the actual Great Mother.
The question naturally arises : what was the real purpose of the
sacrifice of the pig ?
Blackman (" Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt," Pi'o-
ceedings of t!ie Society of Biblical Archceology, March, 1918, p. 57; and
May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of purification was certainly
entertained.
" In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the sea.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 219
In the stoiy of the Destruction of Mankind we have seen that
originally a human victim was slam for the purpose of obtammg the
life-giving human blood to rejuvenate the ageing kmg. Two circum-
stances were responsible for the modification of this procedure, in the
first place, there was the abandonment of human sacrifice and the sub-
stitution of either beer coloured red with ochre to resemble blood (or in
other cases red wine) oi the actual blood of an animal sacrifice in place
of the human blood. Secondly, the blood of the Great Mother her-
self (personified in the special avatar that was recognized in a particular
locality, the cow in one place, the pig in another, and so on) was re-
garded as more potent as a life-giving force than that of a mere mortal
human being. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this was
the real reason for the abandoning of human sacrifice and the substitu-
tion of an animal for a human being. For it is unlikely that, in the
rude state of society which had become familiarized with and brutalized
by the practice of these bloody rites of homicide, ethical motives alone
would have prompted the abolition of the custom of human sacrifice,
to which such deep significance was attached. The substitution of the
animal was prompted rather by the idea of obtaining a more potent
elixir from the life-blood of the Great Mother herself in her cow- or
sow-forms.
In the transitional stage of the process of substitution of an animal
for a human being some confusion seems to have arisen as to the ritual
meaning of the new procedure. If Moret's account of the Egyptian
Mysteries ^ is correct — and without a knowledge of Egyptian philology
I am not competent to express an opinion upon this matter — the attempt
was made to identify the animal victim of sacrifice with the human
being whose place it had taken. In the procession a human being wore
the skin of an animal ; and, according to Moret, there was a ceremony
of passing a human being through the skin as a ritual procedure for
transforming the mock victim into the animal which was to be sacri-
ficed in his place. If there is any tiuth in this interpretation, such a
ceremony must have been prompted by a misunderstanding of the
meaning of the sacrifice, unless the identification of the sacrificial animal
with the goddess was merely a secondary rationalization of the substi-
tution which had been made for ethical or some other reasons.
We know that the dead were often buried in the skins of sacrificial
^ " Mysteres Egyptians."
220 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
animals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given rebirth.
We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins were
worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses.
The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been
prompted not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as
by the desire for identification and communion wnith the particular deity
which the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one
of great complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the
texts by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues,
and refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional
methods of interpretation.
The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of
Hathor's sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How
the real meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained
in Chapter II (" Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow
to obtain a good harvest is homologous wath the sacrifice of a maiden
to obtain a good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of
the beautiful princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being
slain, in one case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the
other her place is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are
merely glosses of the deep motives which more than fifty centuries ago
seem to have prompted early pharmacologists to obtain a more potent
elixir than human blood by stealing from the heights of Olympus the
divine blood of the life-giving deities themselves.
The pig was identified not only with the Great Mother, but with
Osiris and Set also. With the pig's lunar and astral associations I do
not propose to deal in these pages, as the astronomical aspects of the
problems are so vast as to need much more space than the limits im-
posed in this statement. But it is important to note that the identifi-
cation of Set with a pig was perhaps the main factor in riveting upon
this creature the fetters of a reputation for evil. The evil dragon was
the representative of both Set and the Great Mother (Sekhet or
Tiamat) ; and both of them were identified with the pig. Just as Set
killed Osiris, so the pig gave Adonis his mortal injury.^ When these
earthly incidents were embellished with a celestial significance, the con-
^ Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of folklore concern-
ing the pig (" Myths of Egypt," pp. 66 et seq. ; also his books on Baby-
lonian, Indian, and Cretan myths, op. cit. supra).
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 221
flict of Horus with Set was interpreted as the struggle between the
forces of light and order and the powers of darkness and chaos.
When worshipped as a tempest-god the Mesopotamian Rimmon was
known as " the pig " ' and, as " the wild boar of the desert," was a
form of Set.
I have discussed the pig at this length because the use of the words
^otpo«; by the Greeks, and pot ens diwd ponu/iis by the Romans, re-
veals the fact that the terms had the double significance of " pig " and
" cowry-shell ". As it is manifestly impossible to derive the word
'* cowry " from the Greek word for " pig," the only explanation that
will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been ac-
quired from the identification of both the cowry and the pig with the
Great Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words,
the pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess
was originally a personification of the cowry.'
The fundamental nature of the identification of the cowry, the pig,
and the Great Mother, the one with the other, is revealed not merely
in the archaeology of the /Egean, but also in the modern customs and
ancient pictures of the most distant peoples. For example, in New
Guinea the place of the sacrificial pig may be taken by the cowry -
shell ; ^ and upon the chief fagade of the east Mang of the ancient Ameii-
can monument, known as the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, the
hieroglyph of the planet Venus is placed in conjunction with a picture
of a wild pig.*
Gold and the Golden Aphrodite.
The evidence which has been collected by Mr. Wilhid Jackson
seems to suggest that the shell-cults originated in the neighbourhood of
the Red Sea.
With the introduction of the practice of wearing shells on girdles
^ According to Sayce, " Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.
" In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but " lucky pigs '*
were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry- amulets (Budge, " Guide
to the Egyptian Collections " (British Museum), p. 96).
^ Malinowski, Trans, and Proc. Roval Society, South Australia,
XXXIX, 1915, p. 587^^. seq.
^ Seler, " Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Hands-
chriften," Zeitsch. / Ethnologie, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and Fig. 242 in
Maudslay, " Biologia Centrali-Americana, Vol. Ill, PI. 13.
222 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
and necklaces and as hair ornaments the time arrived when people
living some distance from the sea experienced difficulty in obtaining
these amulets in quantities sufficient to meet their demands. Hence
they resorted to the manufacture of imitations of these shells in clay and
stone. But at an early period in their history the inhabitants of the
deserts betw^een the Nile and the Red Sea (Hathor's special province)
discovered that they could make more durable and attractive models of
<:ownes and other shells by using the plastic yellow metal which was
lying about in these deserts unused and unappreciated. This practice
first gave to the metal gold an arbitrary value which it did not possess
before. For the peculiar life-giving attributes of the shells modelled in
the yellow metal came to be transferred to the gold itself. No doubt
the lightness and especially the beauty of such gold models appealed to
the early Egyptians, and were in large measure
responsible for the hold gold acquired over man-
kind. But this was an outcome of the empirical
knowledge gained from a practice that originally
tvJTms^l^^IIIoZ] ^as inspired purely by cultural and not aesthetic
THE SIGN nub. It re- motives. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic sign
PRESENTS A COLLAR . ^"^ ^ 1 I f 1
FROM WHICH GOLDEN for gold was a picture of a necklace of such
AMULETS, PROBABLY RE- , II* H L L J
PRESENTING COWRIES, amulets ; and this emblem became trie determma-
ARE SUSPENOED. ^-^^ ^f ^J^^ Q,^^^ J^^^J^^^ J_[^jJ^^^^ ^^j ^^J^ ^_
cause she was originally the personification of the life-giving shells, but
also because she was the guardian deity both of the Eastern wadys
where the gold was found and of the Red Sea coasts where the covsnes
were obtained. Hence she became the " Golden Hathor," the proto-
type of the " Golden Aphrodite ".
It is a significant token of the influence of these Egyptian incidents
upon the history of the /Egean that among the earliest gold ornaments
found by Schliemann at Troy were a series of crude representations of
cowiies worn as pendants to a hair ornament.^
it is hardly necessary to insist upon the vast influence upon the
history of civilization which this arbitrary value of gold has been re-
sponsible for exerting. For more than fifty centuries men have been
^ So far as I am aware the fact that these objects were intended to re-
present cowries does not appear to have been recognized hitherto. I am
indebted to Mr. Wilfrid Jackson for calling my attention to the figures 685
and 832 in Schliemann's " Ilios " (1880), and for identifying the objects.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 223
searching for the precious metal, and have been spreading abroad
throughout the world the elements of our civilization. It has been not
only the chief factor m bringing about the contact of peoples ' and
incidentally in building up our culture, but it has been the cause, directly
or indirectly, of most of the warfare which has afflicted mankind. Yet
these mighty forces were let loose upon the world as the result of the
circumstance that early searchers for an elixir of life used the valueless
metal to make imitations of their shell amulets !
The identification of gold with cowries may not have been the
primaiy reason for the invention of gold currency. In fact. Professor
Ridgeway has called attention to certain historical events which in his
opinion forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact
that cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the
way for the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. More-
over, we know that long before a real gold currency came into being
rings of gold were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth.
Cowries acquired their significance as currency as the result of incidents
in some respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians
to make gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed
from the sea where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers
of cowries to brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amu-
lets) or of putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh
vital energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such
as their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to
confer such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore
given in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchaes
oi wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remark-
able confusion occurred. In many places cowiies were placed in the
mouth of the dead to confer the breath of life : but when the cowries
acquired the new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all
knowledge of the original significance of this practice explained the
cowiies as money with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world.
Then, in many places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic
com. Most scholars fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists,
^ See Perry, " Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," Procecdbigs
and Memorials of the MaucJiestcr Literary and Philosophical Society.
1916 : also " War and Civilization," Bulletin of the John Rvlands Library,
1913.
224 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
and accept their explanation of the obolus as though it were the real
meaning of the act.
Another result of the use of gold models of shells as Hfe-giving
amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver
of life/ which originally belonged merely to the shell or the imitation of
its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.
Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cov^ry
and the pearl. It was also put to the same use : it was buried with
the dead to confer a continuation of existence.
Not only was Hathor called Nfib, i.e. "gold" or the golden
Hathor : but the place where the funerary statue was made (" born ")
in Egypt was called the " House of Gold " and personified as a god-
dess who gave rebirth to the dead (Alan Gardiner, " The Tomb of
Amenemhet," p. 95 ; and A. M. Blackman, Journal of Egyptian
Archiso/ogy, Vol. IV, p. 127).
When ancient prospectors from the South exploited the rivers of
Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh water pearls, incidentally they also
collected pebbles of jade for the purpose of making seals. The local
inhabitants confused the properties of the stone wath the magical reputa-
tion of the gold and the pearls. One outcome of this jade-fishing in
Turkestan was the transference of the credit of life-giving to jade.
Prospectors searching for these precious materials gradually made their
way east past Lob Nor, and eventually discovered the deposits of gold
and jade in the Shensi province. Thus jade became the nucleus around
which the distinctive civilization of China became crystallized. It
played an obtrusive part not only in attracting men from the West and
in determining the locality where the germs of Western civilization were
planted in China, but also in giving Chinese culture its distinctive shape.
" The ancient Chinese, wishing to facilitate the resun'ection of the
dead, surrounded them with jade, gold, pearls, timber, and other things
imbued with influences emitted from the heavens, or, in other words,
wdth such objects as are pervaded with vital energy derived from the
Vang matter of which the heavens are the principal depository " (De
Groot, op. cit., p. 316).
By a similar process diamonds acquired the same reputation in India
when searchers after gold discovered the precious metal in Hyderabad,
^ " Danas pregnant with immortal gold."
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 225
and the diamonds of Golconda came to be accredited with life-giving
powers.'
According to the beliefs of the Indians '' the Naga owns riches, the
water of life, and a jewel that restores the dead to life ".
Thus gold, pearls, jade, and diamonds in course of time ac-
quired the reputation of elixirs of life, but the hold they established
upon mankind was due to the fact {a) that the amulets made of these
materials made a strong appeal to the aesthetic sense, and (//•) the arbit-
rcU'y value assigned to them made them desirable objects to search for.
In his "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult" (1901) Sir Arthur
Evans gives cogent reasons for the view that at the time when Mycen-
aean influence was powerful in Cyprus " the ' golden Aphrodite ' of the
Egyptians seems to play a much more important part than any form of
Astarte or Mylitta " (p. 52). " The Cypriote {parallels vrill be found
to have a fundamental importance as demonstrating in detail that these
[' a simple form of the palmette pillar, approaching a fleur-de-lys in
outline,' in association with its guardian monsters] are in fact taken over
from the cult of Mentu-Ra, the Warrior Sun-god of Egypt, of Hathor,
and of Horus " (p. 52).
Aphrodite as the Thunder-stone.
As a surrogate of the Great Mother, the Eye of Re, the thunder-
weapon was also identified with any of her varied manifestations.
The thunderbolt is one of the manifestations of the life-giving and
death-dealing Divine Cow, and therefore is able specially to protect
mundane cows."
There are numerous hints in the ancient literature of other countries
in confirmation of the association of the Great Mother vrith " falling
stars ". *' In a fragment of Sanchoniathon, Astarte, travelling about
the habitable world, is said to have found a star falling through the air,
which she took up and consecrated." ^
Aphrodite also was looked upon as a meteoric stone that fell from
^ See Laufer, " The Diamond," also Munn, " The Ancient Gold Mines
of Hyderabad," paper now being published in the P roceedings of the Man-
chester Literary and Philosophical Society.
' Blinckenberg, op. cit., p. 70 et seq.
^ Quoted by Layard, " Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p. 457.
15
226 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
the moon. In the " Iliad," Zeus is said to have sent Athena as a
meteorite horn heaven to earth.'
The association of Aphrodite w^ith meteoric stones and the ancient
belief that they fell from the moon serve to confirm the identification of
these life-giving and death-dealing objects with the pearl and the
thunderbolt. In Southern India the goddesses may be represented
either by small stones or by pots of water, usually seven in number.
During the ceremony around the stone-form of the goddess the kappu-
karan runs thrice around the stone, as the mandrake- digger does around
the plant. The pujaTi who represents the goddess is painted like a
leopard (Hathor's lioness) and kills the sacrificial sheep. The goddess
(like Hathor) is supposed to drink the blood of the sacrificial victims
(Whitehead, op. cit., pp. 164-8).
Many factors played a part in the development of the beliefs about
the origin of mankind hom stones, with which the identification of the
thunderbolt with the winged disk plays a part.
The idea that the cowry was the giver of life and the parent of
men was also transferred to crude stone imitations of the shell. Per-
haps the belief in such stones as creators of human beings may have
been reinforced by finding actual fossilized shells within pebbles."
A further corroboration of this theory was provided when the peail
came to be regarded as the quintessence of the life-giving substance of
shells and as a little particle of moon- substance which fell as a drop of
dew into the gaping oyster. Perry {pp. cit., p. 78) refers to an Indo-
nesian belief among the Tsalisen that their ancestors came out of the
moon ; and the chief of this people has a spherical stone which is said
to represent the moon.
This association of the moon with round stones may be connected
wth the identification of the sun (as the winged disk) with a stone axe,
^ Cook, " Zeus," I, p. 760.
" Striking examples of these stories about birth from split stones have been
given by Perry, " Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Chapter X, and de
Groot's " Religious System of China ". It is possible that the double mean-
ing of the Egyptian word set, as " stone " and " mountain " played a part in
originating these stories. I have already quoted from the Pyramid Texts the
account of the daily birth of the sun-god by a splitting of the " mountain " of
the dawn. By a pun on this word the god's origin might have been inter-
preted as having taken place from a split " stone ". The fact that the Great
Mother was identified with a " mountain " {set) may also have facilitated the
homology with the other meaning of set, i.e. " a stone ".
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 227
when they came to be regarded as alternative weapons for the destruc-
tion or the creation of men. Peiry records a story of a rock being
lowered down from the sun, from which it was born, and out of a cleft
in it man and woman emerged, as they were believed to have been
born from the cleft in the cowry.
Then there are the Egyptian beliefs concerning stone statues, obe-
lisks, or even unshaped blocks of stone which could be animated by
human beings or gods.'
The cycle of these stories was completed when the " Eye of Re "
slaughtered the enemies of the god and they became identified with the
followers of Set, " creatures of stone ". Thus the evil eye petrified
rebellious men : and so was launched upon its course the peculiar
group of legends which in time encircled the world.
It is particularly significant that in Indonesia, in association with
these ideas about stone-origins and peti ifaction, Perry (p. 133) found
also the clear-cut belief that the thunder-weapon was a stone, or the
tooth of a cloud-dragon in the sky.
In Indonesia also petrifaction, thunder-stones, rain, floods, lightning,
and an aiTow shot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning were
the punishments traditionally assigned for certain offences, such as incest
and laughing at animals.
The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these
characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain
animals were impersonations of their gods : they also brought stories of
incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at
their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to their
deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of punishments
as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling class and the
gods in the home of these beliefs.'
^ " Incense and Libations '*.
' As the character and attributes of the early goddesses became more
complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply contrasted, the in-
evitable tendency developed to differentiate the goddesses themselves, and
provide distinctive names for the new personalities thus split off from the
common parent. We see this in Egypt in the case of Hathor and Sekhet,
and in Babylonia in Ishtar and Tiamat. But the process of specialization and
differentiation might even involve a change of sex. There can be no doubt
that the god Horus was originally a differentiation of certain of the aspects of
the sky-goddess Hathor, at first as a brother " Eye ". But as the kmg Horus
was the son of Osiris (as the dead king), when the confusion of the attributes
228 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a
divine prerogative, was analogous to " the blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost," which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable
offence, and in pagan legend was punished by the divine wiath,
thunder, lightning, rain, floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instru-
ments. CEdipus put out his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath
of the gods.
The Serpent and the Lioness.
When the development of the story of the Destruction of Man-
kind necessitated the finding of a human sacrifice and drove the Great
Mother to homicide, this side of her character was symbolized by
identifying her with a man-slaying lion and the venomous uraeus-serpent.
She had previously been represented by such beneficent food-pro-
viding and life-sustaining creatures as the cow, the sow, and the gazelle
(antelope or deer) : but when she developed into a malevolent creature
and became the destroyer of mankind it was appropriate that she should
assume the form of such man-destroyers as the lion and the cobra.
,Once the reason for such identifications grew dim, the uraeus-
form of the Great Mother became her symbol in either of her aspects,
good or bad, although the legend of her poison-spitting, man-destroying
powers persisted.^ The identification of the destroying-goddess v^dth
the moon, " the Eye of the Sun-god," prepared the way for the
rationalization of her character as a uraeus- serpent spitting venom and
the sun's Eye spitting fire at the Sun-god's enemies. Such was the
of Osiris and Hathor — the actual father and the divine mother of Horus —
made their marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of the goddess to
her " brother " was emphasized. But as the Great Mother, Hathor was
the parent of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus but also of his
father Osiris. This complicated rationalization made Hathcr the sister,
mother, and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible for originating the
belief in the incestuous practices of the divine family. When the royal
family assumed the role of gods and goddesses they were bound by these
traditions (which had their origin purely in theological sophistry) and were
driven to indulge in actual incest, as we know from the records of the
Egyptian royal family and their imitators in other countries. But incest be-
came a royal and divine prerogative which was sternly forbidden to mere
mortals and regarded as a peculiarly detestable sin.
^ Sethe, " Zur altagyptische Sage von Sonnenaugen das im Fremde war,"
Untersuchungen sur Geschichte unci Altertumskunde Aigyptetis, V, p. 23.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 229
goddess of Buto in Lower Egypt, whose uraeus-symbol was worn on
the king's forehead, and was misinterpreted by the Greeks as not merely
a symbolic " eye, " but an actual median eye upon the king's or the
god's forehead.
It is not without special significance that in the ancient legend (see
Sethe, op. ciL) the lioness-goddess Tehiut was reputed to have come
from Elephantine (or at any rate the region of Sehel and Biga, which
has the same significance), which serves to demonstrate her connexion
with the story of the Destruction of Mankind and to corroborate the
inference as to its remote antiquity. She was identified wdth Hathor,
Sekhet, Bast, and other goddesses.
But the uraeus was not merely the goddess who destroyed the
king's enemies and the emblem of his kingship : in course of time the
cobra became identified with the ruler himself and the dead king, who
was the god Osiris. When this happened the snake acquired the
god's reputation of being the controller of water.
The fashionable speculation of modern scholars that the movements
of the snake naturally suggest rippling water ^ and provide " the obvious
reason " which led many people quite independently the one of the
other to associate the snake with water, is thus shown to have no
foundation in fact.
One would have imagined that, if any natural association between
snakes and water was the reason for this association, a water-snake
would have been chosen to express the symbolism ; or, if it was the
mere rippling motion of the reptile, that all snakes or any snake would
have been drawn into the analogy. But primarily only one kind of
snake, a cobra, was selected " ; and it is not a water snake, and cannot
live m or under water. It was selected because it was venomous and
the appropriate symbol of man-slaymg.
The circumstances which led to the identification of this particular
serpent with water were the result of a process of legend-making of so
arbitraiy and eccentric a nature as to make it impossible seriously to
pretend that so tortuous a ratiocination should have been exactly fol-
lowed to the same unexpected destination also in Crete and Western
' See especially the claims put forward by Brinton, which have been
accepted by Spinden, Joyce, and many other recent writers.
- Possibly also the Cerastes. At a relatively late period other snakes
were adopted as surrogates of the cobra and Cerastes.
230 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
Europe, in Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia, and in America,
without prompting the one of the other. No serious investigator who
is capable of estimating the value of evidence can honestly deny that
the belief in the serpent's control over water was diffused abroad from
one centre where a concatenation of peculiar circumstances and beliefs
led to the identification of the ruler wath the cobra and the control of
water.
We are surely on safe ground in assuming the improbability of such
a wholly fortuitous set of events happening a second time and produc-
ing the same result elsewhere. Thus when we find in India the Naga
rajas identified with the cobra, and credited with the ability to control
the waters, we can confidently assume that in some way the influence of
these early Egyptian events made itself felt in India. As we compare
the details of the Naga worship in India ^ with early Egyptian beliefs,
all doubt as to their common origin disappears.
The Naga rulers were closely associated v/ith springs, streams, and
lakes. " To this day the rulers of the Hindu Kush states, Hunza and
Nagar, though now Mohammedans, are believed, by their subjects, to
be able to command the elements."
Oldham adds : *' This power is still ascribed to the serpent-gods
of the sun-worshipping countries of China, Manchuria, and Korea, and
was so, until the introduction of Christianity, in Mexico and Peru ".
This is put forward in support of his argument that the Naga kings'
" supposed ability to control the elements, and especially the waters,"
arose " from their connexion with the sun ". But this is not so." The
belief in the Egyptian king's power over water was certainly older
than sun-worship, which did not begin until Osirian beliefs and the
personification of the moon as the Great Mother brought the sky-deities
and the control of water into conelation the one vsnth the other. The
association of the sun and the serpent in the royal insignia was a later
development.
The early Egyptian goddess was identified vsith the uraeus-serpent
in that vitally important nodal point of primitive civilization, Buto, in
Lower Egypt. The earliest deity in Crete and the Eastern Mediter-
^ See Oldham, " Sun and Serpent," p. 51 inter alia.
- Blackman, however, has recently advanced this claim in reference to
Eg>'pt {op. cii., Proc. Soc. Bibl. ArcJucology, 1918, p. 57), as Breasted and
others have done before.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 231
ranean seems to have been a goddess who was also closely associated
with the serpent. According to Langdon " the ophidian nature oi the
earliest Sumerian mother-goddess Inmm is unmistakable. . . . She
carries the caduceus in her hand, two serpents twining about a staff." '
The earliest Indian deities also were goddesses, and the first rulers
of whom any record has been preserved were regarded as divine cobras,
to whom was attributed the power of controlling water. These Nagas,
whether kings or queens, gods or goddesses, were the prototypes of the
Eastern Asiatic dragon, whose origin is discussed in Chapter II.
In Japan the earliest sun-deity was a goddess who was identified
with a snake. Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter II) I have referred
to the completeness of the transference to America of these Old V/orld
ideas of the serpent. Right on the route taken by the mam stream of
cultural diffusion across the Pacific we still find in their fully-developed
form the old beliefs concerning the good Mother Serpent of the ancient
civilizations (C. E. Fox and F. H, Drew, op. at. supra, p. 139).
She could be re-incarnated as a coconut : she controlled crops ; she
was associated with the coming of death into the world, with the in-
troduction of agriculture and the discovery of fire. Like her predeces-
sors in the West she was also a Mother Pot or Basket that never
emptied.
All the hwna o\ figona {i.e. spirits) of San Cristoval have a ser-
pent incarnation from Agunua the creator, worshipped by every one,
to Oharimae and others, only known to particular persons. Other
spirits, called ataro, might be incarnate in almost any animal.
Agunua, who took the form of a serpent, was good, not evil (p. 1 34).
Very many pools, rocks, water-falls, or large trees were thought to be
the abode of Jigona. These serpent spirits could take the foim of a
stone, or retire within a stone, and sacred stones seem to be connected
\A^ Jigona rather than with ataro (p. 135). Almost all the local
fioona are represented as female snakes, but Agunua is a male snake
(p. 137).
As the real significance of the snake's symbolism originated from
its identification with the Great Mother in her destructive aspect, it
is not surprising that the snake is the most primitive form of the evil
^ S. Langdon, " A Seal of Nidaba, the Goddess of Vegetation," Pro-
ceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology, Vol. XXXVI, 1914, p.
281.
232 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
dragon. The Babylonian Tiamat was originally represented as a huge
serpent/ and throughout the world the serpent is pre-eminently a symbol
of the evil dragon and the powers of evil.
The serpent that tempted Eve was the homologue both of the
mother of mankind herself and also of the tree of paradise. It was the
representative of the dragon-protector of pearls and of other kinds of
treasure : it was also the goddess who animated the sacred tree as well
as the protector who attacked all who approached it. It was the evil
dragon that tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit which brought
her mortality.
The identification of the Great Mother with the lioness (and the
secondary association of her husband artd son with the lion) was re-
sponsible for a widespread relationship of these creatures with the gods
and goddesses in Egypt and the Mediterranean, in Western Asia, in
Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia [tiger] and America [ocelot, and
forms borrowed from the conventionalized lions and tigers of the Old
World].
The account of the Great Mother's attributes and associations throws
into clear relief certain aspects of the evolution of the dragon which
were left in a somewhat nebulous state in Chapter II. The earliest
form assumed by the powder of evil was the serpent or the lion, because
these death-dealing creatures were adopted as symbols of the Great
Mother in her role as the Destroyer of Mankind. When Horus was
differentiated from the Great Mother and became her locum tenens,
his falcon (or eagle) was blended with Hathor's lioness to make the
composite monster which is represented on Elamite and Babylonian
monuments (see p. 79). But when the role of water as the instrument
of destruction became prominent, Ea's antelope and fish were blended
to make a monster, usually known as the " goat-fish," which in India
and elsewhere assumed a great variety of forms. Some of the varieties
of makai-a were sufficiently like a crocodile to be confused or identified
with this representative of the followers of Set.
1 he real dragon was created when all three larval types — serpent,
eagle-lion, and antelope-fish — were blended to form a monster with
bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales, the
antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and tail,
' L. W. Kiag, " Babylonian Religion," p. 58.
THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 233
and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of other
animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers, and
the elephant's head, led to endless variation in the dragon's traits.
The essential unity of the motives and incidents of the myths of all
peoples and of every age is a token, not of independent origin or the
result of " the similarity of the working of the human mind," but of
their derivation from the same ultimate source.
The question naturally arises : what is a myth ? The dragon-myth
of the West is the religion of China. The literature of every religion
is saturated with the influence of the myth. In what respect does re-
ligion differ from myth ? In Chapter I, I attempted to explain how
origmally science and religion were not differentiated. Both were the
outcome of man's attempt to peer into the meaning of natural pheno-
mena, and to extract fi'om such knowledge practical measures for cir-
cumventing fate. His ever-insistent aim was to combat danger to life.
Religion was differentiated from science when the measures for con-
trolling fate became invested wath the assurance of supernatural help,
for which the growth of a knowledge of natural phenomena made it
impossible for the mere scientist to be the sponsor. It became a
question of faith rather than knowledge ; and man's instinctive struggle
against the risk of extinction impelled him to cling to this larger hope
of salvation, and to embellish it with an ethical and moral significance
which at first was lacking in the eternal search for the elixir of life.
If religion can be regarded as archaic science enriched with the
belief in supernatural control, the myth can be regarded as effete re-
ligion which has been superseded by the growth of a loftier ethical
purpose. The myth is to religion what alchemy is to chemistry or
astrology is to astronomy. Like these sciences, religion retains much
of the material of the cruder phase of thought that is displayed in myth,
alchemy, and astrology, but it has been refined and elaborated. The
dross has been to a large extent eliminated, and the pure metal has
been moulded into a more beautiful and attractive form. In searching
for the elixir of life, the makers of religion have discovered the philcso-
phers stone, and with its aid have transmuted the base materials of myth
into the gold of religion.
If we seek for the deep motives which have prompted men in all
ages so persistently to search for the elixii- of hfe, for some means of
averting the dangers to which their existence is exposed, it will be
234 THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
found in the instinct of self-preservation, which is the fundamental
factor in the behaviour of all li\ang beings, the means of preservation of
the life which is their distinctive attribute and the veiy essence of
their being.
The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine
powers of life-giving ; but with the development of a higher concept
tion of religious ideals it became relegated to a baser role, and eventu-
ally became the symbol of the powers of evil.
ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
"> . Xi-V - f^ ^i^ I
c
y^n-^j^O^^ ^( ^
i/'
V/ . -J IT lA^V
CORRIGENDA.
P. xix
(also
the de
scription of Fig. 25 facing p. 184 and the fcoLnotes o;i
anci
225).
For Blinckenberg Tead Biinkcr.berg.
p. 77.
,, Yung „ Jung.
P. 82.
„ Trislam ,, Tristram.
P. 137.
„ PI. VI. .. Fig. 17.
„ PI. VII. „ Fig. 16.
P. '158.
„ Hadramant „ Hadraraaut.
P. 181.
„ Fig. 24. h and / „ Fig. 24, k and /.
P. 223.
„ purchaes „ purchase.
„ Proceedings and Memoirs ,, Memoirs and Proceedings
pp.
'89
NOTES.
o. The publication of the memoir to which reference is made in the footnote on p. 99 and of
Major :V4unn's paper mentioned in footnote 1 on p. 225 has been unavoidably delayed.
b. Since the book has been printed I have obtained further corroboration of the explanation
proposed (on pp. 199 and 200) for the special meaning acquired by the Hebrew word for
" pots " (duda'im). The use o( the plural form of this word for the mandrake-avatar of
the Great Mother is due to the fact that in Western Asia and elsewhere the goddess was
usually identified not with a single pot (dud) but with several (most commonly seven) pots
(duda'im).
The Evolution of the Dragon,
RECENT AND FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS OF
THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY.
CATALOGUE OF THE DEMOTIC PAPYRI IN THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY. With facsimiles and complete tianslalions. By F. LI. Griffith, M.A. 1909.
3 vols. 4to. 3 guineas net.
Vol. I : Atlas of facsimiles in collotype. Vol. 2 : Lithographed hand copies of the
earlier documents. Vol. 3 : Key-list, translations, commentaries, and indexes.
*^" This is something more than a catalogue, since it includes collotype facsimiles of the whole
i the documents, with translittiations, translations, valuable introductions, vei-y full notes, and a
lossary of Demotic, representing, in the estimation of scholars, the most important contiibution to
le study of Demotic hitherto published.
ATALOGUE OF THE COPTIC MANUSCRIPTS IN THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY. By W. E. Crum, M.A. 1909. 4to, pp. xii, 273. 12 plates of facsimiles, in
collotype. I gumea net.
*,* The collection includes a series of private letters considerably older than any in Coptic
.litherto known, in addition to many manuscripts of great theological and historical interest. Many
of the texts are reproduced in exteitao.
CATALOGUE OF THE GREEK PAPYRI IN THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY.
By Arthur S. Hunt, M.A., Litt.D.. J. de M. Johnson, M.A., and Victor Martin, D. fes L.
Vol. I : Literary texts (Nos. 1-61). 191 1. 4to, pp. xii, 204. 10 plates of facsimiles in
collotype. Vol. 2 : Documents of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (Nos. 62-456). 1916.
4to, pp. XX, 488. 23 plates in collotype. Each volume 1 guinea net
*»* The texts are reproduced i7t euitenso, and comprise many interesting Biblical, liturgical,
classical papvri, and non-literary documents of an official or legal character ranging from the third
century B.C. to the sixth century A.D.
UMERIAN TABLETS FROM UMMA IN THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY.
. . . Transcribed, transliterated, and translated by C. L. Bedale, M.A. . . . With a Fore-
word by Canon C. H. W. Johns M.A., Litt.D. 4to, pp. xvi, 16, with ten facsimiles
5s. fiet.
*»* This thin quarto consists of a description of fifty-eight tablets, forming part of the collec-
tion recently acquired by the library.
A CLASSIFIED CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS ON ARCHITECTURE AND
THE ALLIED ARTS IN THE PRINCIPAL LIBRARIES OF MANCHESTER
AND SALFORD, with alphabetical author list and subject index. Edited for the Archi-
tectural Committee of Manchester by Henry Guppy and Guthrie Vine. 1909. 8vo, pp.
XXV, 310. 3s. 6d. net, or interleaved 4s. 6d. yet.
*,* This catalogue is the first of its kind to be issued, with the exception of a few union lists
jf periodicals and incunabula.
." ^' ANALYTICAL CATALOGUE OF THE CONTENTS OF THE TWO EDU
TIONS OF "AN ENGLISH GARNER," compiled by Edward Arber (1877-97), and
rearranged under the editorship of Thomas Seccombe (1903-04). 1909. 8vo, pp. viii, 221.
Is. net.
A BRIEF HISTORICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE LIBRARY AND ITS CON-
TENTS, illustrated with thirty-seven views and facsimiles. By Henry Guppy. 1914. 8vo,
pp. xvi, 73, and thirty-seven illustrations. 6d. ')iet.
THE JOHN RYLANDS FACSIMILES. A series of reproductions of some of the more in-
teresting and important of the rarer books in the possession of the libraiy. The volumes
consist of minutely accurate facsimiles of the works selected, preceded by bibliographical
introductions.
1. PROPOSITIO JOHANNIS RUSSELL, printed by William Caxton, circa A.D. 1476.
. . . With an introduction by Henry Guppy. 1909. 8vo, pp. 36, 8. 3s. 6d. yiet.
*,* An oration, pronounced by John Russell, Chancellor of England, on the investiture of
Charles, Duke of Burgundy, with the Order of the Garter, in February, 1 469, at Ghent.
For many years the copy now in the John Rylands Library was considered to be unique.
Until 1807 it lay buried and unnoticed in the heart of a volume of manuscripts, with which it had
evidently been bound up by mistake. Since then, another copy has been discovered in the librai-y
at Holkam Hall, the seat of the Earl of Leicester.
2. A BOOKE IN ENGLYSH METRE, of the Great Marchaunt man called "Dives Prag-
maticus ". . . . 1563. . . . With an introduction by Percy E. Newbery ; and remarks on
the vocabulary and dialect with a glossary by Henry C. Wyld. 1910. 4to, pp. xxxviii, 16.
5s. 7iet.
*^* The tract here reproduced is believed to be the sole surviving copy of a quaint little primer
which had the laudable object of instructing the young in the names of trades, professions, ranks,
and common objects of daily life in their own tongue.
3. A LITIL BOKE the whiche traytied and reherced manygode thinges necessaries for the . . .
Pestilence . . . made by the . . . Bisshop of Arusiens. . . . [London], [1485 ?]. . .
With an introduction by Guthrie Vine. 1910. 4to, pp. xxxvi, 18. 5s. net.
*^* Of this little tract, consisting of nine leaves, written by Benedict Kanuti, or Knutsson,
Bishop of Vaisteras, three separate editions are known, but only one copy of each, and an odd leaf
are known to have survived.
There is no indication in any edition of the place of printing, date or name of printer, but they
are all printed in one of the five types employed by William de Machlinia, who printed first in
partnership with John Lettou and afterwards alone in the City of London, at the time when William
Caxton was at the most active period of his career at Westminster.
WOODCUTS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY. Reproduced in facsimile. With an introduction and descriptive notes by
Campbell Dodgson M.A. Folio. Ten plates, of which two are in colour, and 16 pp. of
text, in a portfolio. 7s. 6d. net.
*J* Two of these woodcuts are of exceptional interest and importance, and have been known
and celebrated for a century and a half, but have not hitherto been reproduced in a satisfactorv'
manner by any of the modern photo-mechanical processes. The two woodcuts referred to represent
" St. Christopher " and " The Annunciation," the former of which has acquired a great celebrity
by reason of the date (1423) which it bears, and which, until recently, gave to it the unchallenged
position of the first dated woodcut.
THE ODES AND PSALMS OF SOLOMON. Facsimile in collotype of the original Syriac
manuscript in the John Rylands Library, accompanied by a typographical reprint or trans-
literation of the text, a revised translation in English Versicles, and an exhaustive introduction
dealing with the variations of the fragmentary manuscripts in the British Museum, the accessory
patristic testimonies, and a summary of the most important criticisms that have appeared since
its first publication in 1909. By J. Rendel Harris, M.A., D.Litt., etc., Hon. Fellow of Clare
College, Cambridge, and Alphonse Mingana, D.D. 2 vols. 4to.
Vol. 1 : The text, with facsimile reproductions. 10s. 6d. net.
Vol. 2 : Translation and introduction. 10s. 6d. ^let. (Shortly.)
THE ASCENT OF OLYMPUS. By Rendel Han is. Demy 8vo. Pp. 140. 20 Illus-
trations. 5s. net.
*,* A reprint, with corrections, expansions, justifications, and additional illustrations, of the
four articles on Greek Mythology, which have appeared in the " Bulletin '* from time to time.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON. By G. Elliot Smith, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
Demy 8vo. Illustrations. 10s. 6d. net.
*^* An elaboration of the lectures : " Incense and Libations,' " Dragons an J Rain Gods,"
and " The Birth of Aphrodite ".
CATALOGUE OF THE WESTERN MANUSCRIPTS IN THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY. Part I : Latin Manuscripts, Nos. 1-185. By Montague Rhodes James,
Litt.D., etc. 2 vols. 4to. 200 plates of facsimiles. 3 guineas nst. (Shortly.)
Vol. I : Descriptive catalogue, with indexes of contents, place names, prof)er names,
saints, illustrations, etc. Pp. xvi, 328.
Vol. 2 : Facsimiles m collotype.
*^* The collection here described includes examples, of first-class quality, of the art and calli-
graphy of all the great schools of Europe.
BULLETIN OF THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY. A quarterly publication, which in
addition to notes and news respecting the Library, with lists of the most recent additions to the
shelves, includes original articles by leading scholars, which are of permanent value and interest.
Is. net.
THE JOHN RYLANDS LECTURE SERIES.
Demy 8vo. Is. wt, each, unless otherwise stated.
THE YOUTH OF VERGIL. By R. S. Conway. Liit.D. Pp. 28.
THE VENETIAN POINT OF VIEW IN ROMAN HISTORY. By R. S. Conway.
Litt.D.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CULT OF APHRODITE. By Rendel Harris, M.A., D.Liit..
etc. Pp. 30. 9 Illustrations.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CULT OF APOLLO. By Rendel Harris, M.A., D.Litt., etc.
Pp. 40. Frontispiece and illustrations.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CULT OF ARTEMIS. By Rendel Harris. M.A., D.Litt..
etc. Pp. 39. Illustrations.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CULT OF DIONYSOS. By Rendel Harris. M.A., D.Litt..
etc. Pp. 17.
THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS. By Rendel Harris, M.A..
D.Litt . D.Theol., etc. (Shortly.)
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL IDEALS IN THE ENGLISH POETS.
By C. H. Herford, M.A., Litt.D. Pp. 24.
NORSE MYTH IN ENGLISH POETRY. By C. H. Herford. M.A., Litt.D.
{SJiortli/.)
THE POETRY OF LUCRETIUS. By C. H. Herford. M.A.. Litt.D. Pp. 26.
SOME EARLY JUD/EO-CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS IN THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY : 1. A new life of Clement of Rome ; 2. The Book of Shem son of Noah ;
3- Fragment from the Philosopher Andronicus and Asaph, the Historian of the Jews.
Syriac Texts, edited with English translations by Alphonse Mingcina, D.D. Pp. 62.
(Price 2s.)
THE QUINTESSENCE OF PAULINISM. By A. S. Peake, M.A., D.D. Pp. 31.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR STUDENTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By A. S. Peake, M.A.. D.D. Pp. 10. (Price 6d.)
WAR AND CIVILIZATION. By W. J. Perry. B.A. Illustrated with 9 sketch maps.
(Price is. 6d.)
SOME NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE'S STAGE AND PLAYS. By William Poel.
Founder of the Elizabethan Stage Society. Pp. 16. 3 Illustrations.
PROMINENT POINTS IN THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SHAKESPEARE.
Arranged in four tables, with notes, by William Poel. (Price 2s.)
A PURITAN IDYLL: RICHARD BAXTER (1615-1691) AND HIS LOVE
STORY. By Frederick J. Powicke. M.A.. Ph.D.
THE INFLUENCE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION IN THE EAST
AND IN AMERICA. By G. Elliot Smith, M.A.. M.D.. F.R.S. Pp. 32. 7 Illus-
tralions.
THE MODERN GREEK AND HIS ANCESTRY. By Alfied Thumb. Dr.Phil..
Litt.D. Pp. 27.
THE ENGLISH CIVIL SERVICE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. By
T. F. Tout. M.A.. F.B.A. Pp. 32.
A MEDI.'EVAL BURGLARY. By T. F. Tout. M..A.. F.B.A. Pp. 24. 2 Illustrations.
MEDl/EVAL TOWN PLANNING. By T. F. Tout. M.A.. F.B.A. Pp. 35. II Illus-
trations. (Price Is. 6d.)
MEDI/EVAL AND MODERN WARFARE. By T. F. Tout. M.A.. F.B.A.
(SJwrtly.)
DREAMS AND PRIMITIVE CULTURE. By W. H. R. Rivers. M..A.. M.D..
F.R.S.. F.R.C.P.
791007
X^ '^ ^/rM^.^t^^^^
.Smith, G. E. 1^^
Evolution Qj. -the dragon.
St.